Gensokyo Channel One
by UnmovingGreatLibrary
Summary: When a forgotten TV station drifts in from the outside world, Nitori and Sanae decide to found a broadcasting company to introduce Gensokyo to the wonders of television. Meanwhile, a group of kappa outcasts, led by a ruthless weaponsmith with more ammo than patience, hatch a plan to steal everything of value from the human village.
1. Chapter 1

_One note upfront: The chapters for this are all complete apart from a final editing pass. Unless some unexpected delays crop up, I'll be posting a chapter every Monday and Friday, with two chapters on the first and last days. There are still sixteen chapters, so I expect that to take until the first week of September._

* * *

Standing on the open slope of Youkai Mountain, Nitori hesitated to consider her options.

She'd already spent ten minutes traveling uphill, darting from tree to tree and watching the sky for hidden observers. In order to move as quickly as possible, she'd ditched everything that might slow her down. No backpack. No toolbox. Not even a weapon, apart from the pistol she kept hidden under her hat—barely even enough to be worth mentioning, in her opinion. All she had going for her was her optical camouflage, humming to itself as it struggled to keep her hidden. Practically naked, by kappa standards.

Stealth would only buy her so much now. Speed. That was the important thing, probably. Reach her destination, get what she came for, and make her way back before anything happened. She reached for the power switch for her camouflage, but hesitated. It wasn't even about what could happen, but the _principle_ of the thing. With no tools, no weapons, and no camouflage, she was practically a human. It was an embarrassing state to be in, that's what it was.

Nothing to do but get it over with as quickly as possible. She took a deep breath, got a running start, and hit the power switch. With one last beep, her camouflage deactivated. One second, an observer would have seen nothing but a distortion in the air. The next, Nitori exploded into being, running at a full sprint.

Foliage scratched at her skin, but she didn't let them slow her down. Even for a relatively minor youkai, such things were an inconvenience at worst. The fact that this was an uphill trip was more of an issue. She'd always relied on her helicopter pack to travel up the mountain, and kappa weren't really built for long trips on land, either. She started wheezing for air, her pulse pounding in her ears...

And crested a ridge. The Moriya shrine came into view above her. Seeing her destination gave her all she needed to keep going. She lowered her head and gritted her teeth, urging her aching muscles to carry her the last hundred meters.

She'd barely even screeched to a stop on the shrine's front step before she started pounding on the door. "Hello! Is anybody home? There's something I really need to talk to you about!"

No answer. Nitori kept beating on the door. It rattled under her fist. "Hellooooo! Look, it's really urgent!"

A few more knocks. "Come on, I don't have time for th—"

The door slid open, and her fist came down on nothing.

From inside, Suwako peered up at her curiously. "Urgent, eh?" She leaned back, resting her hands on her hips and inspecting her. "I never knew a kappa to be so gung ho about religion."

"It's not about...!" Nitori trailed off mid-sentence to wheeze for air. The pause gave her some time to think. "I need to talk to your shrine maiden. Is she in?"

"Huh? Yeah, she is. What do you need her for?"

"I have, er... business? To talk to her about."

"'Business'? Just 'business'?"

"Look!" Nitori drew herself up to her full height, which wasn't very tall. Fortunately, almost anybody could look tall next to Suwako. "It's a confidential matter, okay? I'm not going to tell the details to somebody who doesn't need to know them."

Suwako held her gaze for a moment, then stepped back from the door and cupped her hand to her mouth. "Sanae! You have a suitor!"

"I'm not a—!"

"It's okay! Our Sanae is a lively girl. This isn't the first time she's charmed somebody."

"A... suitor?" Sanae's voice called from within the shrine. "Lady Suwako, this is a joke, right?"

"Nope! This young lady seems pretty keen on you. She might even be getting ready to propose."

"A suitor, though? I didn't think anybody in Gensokyo really felt like..." Sanae rounded the corner, coming into view of the two. She paused when she saw Nitori. "... um?"

"Eh, um, hey, look," Nitori stammered. "I'm not a suitor."

"Hey, there's no need to be shy. A kappa's a pretty good catch." Suwako leaned forward and gave Nitori a nudge with her elbow and an overstated wink that made it perfectly clear that she was enjoying herself. Nitori grumbled, but accepted it. Considering that she'd backtalked a goddess, she was probably getting off lightly.

"So, then," Suwako said, taking a step backward. "An old lady like me should leave you lovebirds to it, I imagine. You kids enjoy yourselves, now!"

The two stayed there, frozen in embarrassment, until Suwako was well back into the shrine and out of earshot. Sanae was the first one to manage to piece a sentence together. "You're... not really a suitor, right?"

"Huh? Er, no! No, no! Kappa don't do that kind of thing! There's not even a—look, one person lays eggs, and the other one finds them later and fertilizes them, and...!" Nitori trailed off. "A-anyway, it doesn't matter! I'm here about business!"

"Oh! Okay." Sanae looked relieved. "... what kind of business?"

"I'm investigating something, and I could use an outside world specialist to take a look at it. Do you think you've got an hour or two free?"

"Sure, I'm free. What do you need?"

"Well, do you have a, um..." Nitori mimed holding something to her ear as she fished for the word. "A cellphone! That thing the new outside world girl uses."

"Sumireko? Sure, I have one. Mine's older, though."

"Great! That shouldn't be an issue. Actually, older is better, maybe. Do you think you could bring it and help me run some tests?"

"Hmm, well... if you just need my phone, I could let you borrow it. I don't have much use for it in Gensokyo."

Nitori hesitated. Getting her hands on outside world tech was a rare and enlightening treat... but her current goal was far, far more important than a single phone, and if she needed to spend half an hour figuring out how to work the thing, it would only slow her down. "I'll need you to work it," she said. "Oh, and you have anything else that uses that kind of signal, bring that too. I want to test some stuff."

"Anything that uses a wireless signal? Er, are you sure? That's a lot of things..."

"The more, the better. You might want to throw them in a box or something, though. It's a bit of a walk. And hurry! We might not have much time."

* * *

One time, Sanae had led an entire squad of tengu warriors and two goddesses home, both groups drunk and singing, after they'd had entirely too much to drink during negotiations.

Another time, she had flown back and forth across Gensokyo chasing a flying boat full of Buddhists.

Yet another time, she'd run from the Hakurei Shrine to the human village wearing nothing but a towel, chasing a youkai fox who was both disguised as her and wearing her stolen clothes.

And today's trip _still_ counted as one of the strangest ones she'd ever taken in Gensokyo.

Nitori had been reluctant to tell her where they were going. Nitori was very insistent that they needed to walk there, that nobody could follow them, and that if they thought anybody might have seen them, they needed to take a different path. She'd also insisted that they needed to move quickly, so they were running down the mountain at a slow jog, through thin underbrush and between trees.

In Sanae's arms was a box containing the supplies that Nitori had requested—every single thing she could think of that used a radio signal. Most of them were dusty from disuse, and they bounced and jostled around in the box as she ran, raising a cloud of dust that left her sneezing for the first kilometer.

The forest grew more pristine the farther they traveled from the main paths, with the underbrush thinning as the canopy overhead grew heavier. This wasn't the sort of place that Sanae had ever gone before. Theoretically, it was tengu territory, but even the tengu didn't have much use for it. It was the domain of beast youkai, fairies, and all the other species of Gensokyo that were too unorganized to claim anywhere more desireable for themselves. Nothing that Sanae couldn't handle with ease, but it still made her wish she'd brought her onusa.

As they jogged along, she caught the glint of metal in the canopy below. Slowly, their destination came into view.

It was a tower. A metal tower, just barely taller than the trees around it. It might have once been new, but it was hard to imagine—long corrosive stains rain down the sides, and tree branches were tangled in its scaffolding. The wobbly remains of a chainlink fence stood around it, and a few pieces of machinery sat at its base, some of them looking far newer than the others. Next to the tower was a broad, squat building, covered in chipped paint that had probably been white at some point.

"Whoa!" Sanae hopped over the lowest point in the fence and gazed up at the tower. "Did you build this?"

"Nope. I found it this way. Well, most of it. I've had to do some restoration myself."

Sanae sat down the box of electronic devices that she'd brought with her and rested a hand on one of the tower's supports. She gave it a thoughtful rap with her knuckles, and the entire structure hummed. "Why would somebody build it all the way up here?"

"I think it drifted in from the outside world. It's kind of rare for whole buildings to show up, but it's happened a few times." Nitori walked across the fenced-in area, to a corner of the building where most of the newer-looking equipment sat. Among them was a big, chunky switch, the type that Sanae had never seen outside of movies about cackling mad scientists. She grabbed it in both hands, braced her body, and gave it a tug. It settled into place with a satisfyingly heavy _clunk_.

Electricity flowed out, and the machinery around them came alive with a high-pitched hum.

Sanae stepped back and looked up at the tower, her eyes wide. She hadn't heard the sound of electronics powering up in ages. After years of living in Gensokyo, it was a strangely nostalgic experience.

"Wow..." she said.

"Yep. Still in working condition, as far as I can tell."

"So, um... why did we have to rush to get here?"

Nitori stepped away from the switch and took a seat on a nearby toolbox. "Well, you guys sell outside world tech to the kappa when you need cash, right? How much do you think something like this would go for?"

Sanae craned her head back and looked up at the tower. It was definitely a bit bigger than anything they'd ever sold. Once, they'd pawned off a microwave, and gotten enough money to support the shrine for a month and a half. Compared to that...

"Oh. Um, yeah. I think I see your point."

"Right? This place is a _gold mine_." Nitori grinned, with an expression like she might run over and hug one of the tower's supports. "And that's just if you broke it down for parts. As far as I can tell, nobody else has noticed it yet. If they do, all it will take is me leaving for a few minutes and... bam!"

"Bam?"

"Stolen! It isn't like I have a deed or anything. So, until I've staked my claim, I need to be careful."

"Where are you even getting enough power to run something like this?"

"Ah, um." Nitori glanced away guiltily. "Well. I might be borrowing a little from the wires running up from the reactor underground..."

"... hey! That's our power!" Sanae leveled a finger at her accusingly. "You shouldn't use it without asking!"

"A-ah, it's just a, um, a temporary measure! There are a lot of ways I can make my own power once I know this place works! That's the important thing for now, anyway. Go on, pull your phone out and see if it's getting a signal!"

Sanae frowned, not comfortable dropping the subject quite so easily, but she _was_ curious. Besides, the box of electronics held a lot of memories for her. A few hand-held systems, a phone or two, a radio... a lot of these items had been staples of her junior high summer afternoons. For now, she fished her phone out and waited a few seconds for it to start up. She was almost surprised that it still started, but it flashed a 'NO SERVICE' warning on the screen. "Hmm... nope."

"I guess that was too much to hope for, huh. What else do you have?"

"Hmm, well..." Sanae searched again and pulled out a different device. "Walkie-talkie?"

"Eh, sure."

She pressed the button. "Nothing..."

"Next."

"A radio-controlled clock... Nope."

One by one, Sanae cycled through the devices in her box. Batteries were swapped out and extension cords were strung to Nitori's nearest outlet, but none of them showed any sign that they were getting anything from the tower overhead. A dozen devices in, Sanae slowed down and looked up at the building.

The front of the building was bare, and covered in years of grime. Near the middle, though, she could just make out the ancient outline of a long-gone sign, reading 'EVIS.'

"I think I have an idea..." Sanae said. "Can I see what's inside?"

* * *

Practically everywhere that there were kappa, there were areas where somebody could sneak off, lock the door behind them, and work for a few weeks without being disturbed. Kappa were pretty antisocial creatures, for one thing. In the opinion of most kappa, the only thing less interesting than talking to another kappa was talking to anybody _else_. When you added in their tendency to borrow tools from each other and never return them, plus a competitive bent that could make them very secretive when they had a big project underway, many kappa took this a step farther and had their own private hideouts.

Genbu Ravine was riddled with caves, and practically every single one had been claimed by a kappa at some point. Until recently, this one had been one of the few exceptions, left untouched because nobody thought it was worth the effort. In the highest foothills of Youkai Mountain, through a narrow ravine with a stream flowing at the bottom, behind a mess of boulders, it wasn't easy to get to. A short distance in, a light bulb hung from the ceiling. It was the only hint that Rumi had found the place she wanted. A trail of lights led back from it, leading the way through the cave's winding passages.

Twenty meters in, the sunlight behind her had faded away to nothing.

Forty meters in, she could hear voices deeper in the cave.

Fifty meters in, she rounded a corner, and the cave opened up into a cavern the size of a mansion.

At least, that was the feeling she got from it. In front of her, a large table sat on the cavern floor. A single lamp illuminated it from above, a tiny oasis of light in the vast, empty darkness. Near the edges of the lit circle, she could see a few shelves and other signs of habitation. Beyond those, there was nothing but the occasional glimmer of other objects in the distance. She wasn't sure how far the caves stretched. Her footsteps sounded like they were echoing for kilometers.

There were three kappa already sitting at the table. Rumi froze when she saw them. They looked up, their conversation coming to a pause as they inspected her in return.

"Huh," one of them said after a few seconds, breaking the silence. "Didn't expect a one-armed girl."

Rumi glanced aside, self-consciously running her fingers over her left hand. It gleamed under the bright lights. "I have two arms! Just... one of them is metal."

"What good's a metal arm?"

"It does a lot of things...!" Rumi held her hand up and wiggled her fingers demonstratively. One of them jolted and dispensed a toothpick from the fingertip. The toothpick fell to the cave floor. She flushed, but pushed on. "It has a lighter, and a screwdriver, and a flashlight, and, um, a fishing line, but the last time I used it, the fish pulled my arm off..."

One of the other kappa shuffled a pile of papers around in front of herself, then glanced over one. "She lost it in an accident. Building some kind of teleporter, supposedly? It also took out quite a chunk of wall in the main hideout, and flooded an entire wing."

Rumi lowered her eyes to the cave floor, but didn't refute the accusations.

"Whatever," the first kappa said. "Take a seat, metal-arm."

Rumi wanted to keep arguing, but her few social instincts told her that it was probably better to drop the subject. She gave a single nod, mumbled a response, and sank down into an empty seat.

The overhead light looked a lot brighter from this angle. Everybody's face was left shrouded in darkness. Even so, Rumi's memory slowly managed to put names to the other kappa at the table.

Tengu and humans usually thought of kappa as a lawless species. They didn't have a government, and the few large-scale projects they finished were small miracles of a dozen individual kappa just happening to find the same thing fascinating at the same time. A lone kappa was a one-woman research and development lab. A small group of kappa was a weird hydra of an organization, where everybody was performing experiments on borrowed pieces of each other's experiments. The collective term for a _large_ group of kappa was commonly held to be 'a disaster.'

Somehow, it worked out, and kappa society mostly kept chugging along. Most kappa felt like a civil war would require too much social interaction, anyway.

Even so, while there were no laws, there were _rules_. No destroying a project somebody put a lot of work into, unless the result was even more interesting. No trying to kill other kappa. No starting trouble for kappa as a whole. Breaking these rules didn't carry any sort of prison sentence, but the offending party would suddenly find themselves locked out of casually borrowing their neighbors' tools, getting last pick whenever interesting new salvage came in, and ultimately not getting informed when the communal hideout's hidden entrances were moved.

The kappa around Rumi were all exactly that sort of kappa.

For example, the one who'd spoken to her, at the end of the table. Her name was Ririsa, Rumi was pretty sure. After an incident had led to some of the human village's amateur youkai hunters poking around the ravine, Ririsa had been the one to drive them off. When the Hakurei shrine maiden came to investigate, Ririsa had attacked her, too, and stood her ground for almost twenty seconds before fleeing. Being one of the few kappa to ever face a shrine maiden in a life-or-death fight and live to talk about it had made her a living legend, but the Hakurei girl's resulting rampage had caused way more problems than that was worth. Ririsa had been banished, and hadn't been seen in years.

Next to her, the one with all the papers, was Maeri. Maeri had previously been a bit of a leader among the kappa, one of the few who could occasionally oversee a successful large-scale project. She'd founded a banking service, Gensokyo's first outside of the human and tengu villages. She'd done pretty good business, until the day she'd declared that she was closing shop and ran off with half the kappa race's life savings. She wasn't exactly welcome in polite society these days.

They were two of the most notorious criminals known the kappa civilization, and Rumi was apparently going to be working with them from now on. She shrank down in her seat and tried not to wonder if it was too late to sneak out.

"One-arm girl makes five," Ririsa said. "How many are there even supposed to be?"

"There are five chairs," Maeri said.

"That doesn't mean anything."

"There are five chairs," Maeri repeated. "That's the four of us, plus Touko, wherever she is. This is a good hideout, so she isn't expecting guests. If there are five chairs, it's because she expects five people to be present. If we include her, then with the four of us—"

"Right, right, I got it. Stop yapping before you give me a headache."

An irritable grumble rose from the final kappa at the table. "Don't talk to Maeri like that."

This one, this was one of the least kappa-like kappa that Rumi had ever seen, with short brown hair and a face that could almost get her mistaken for a human child. She was wearing what looked like a custom-made pair of bib overalls, with the front and sides completely covered in shallow pockets. Occasional odds and ends poked out of them—a sewing needle here, a scrap of cloth there—and she was constantly fidgeting with the flaps. Rumi's memory eventually dug up the name 'Orisa' for her, but she couldn't remember why it had ever come up.

"And you'd do well to show Touko more respect," Maeri continued. "Touko is... well, er, she's very temperamental. Please try not to upset her."

"Crazy," Orisa added. "Shouldn't be working for her."

"So I hear," Ririsa said, settling back into her chair and crossing her arms. "I didn't know she was real, to be honest. Figured she was just one of those stories you tell to kids to get them to shut up."

"I, um," Rumi blurted out, and she instantly regretted it, as every eye at the table turned toward her. "I heard that a few years ago, she smashed the Hakurei shrine _just for fun_."

"That's just a rumor," Maeri said with a scoff. "The shrine got wrecked by some celestial. … not that Touko wouldn't do that kind of thing, you understand."

"Well now," a voice said from the darkness. By kappa standards, it was practically a baritone, and the cave only made it more imposing, a booming echo like a thunderclap. The owner stepped forward to the edge of the light, until her face was visible. "You girls have some awful unkind things to say about me, but since I've got a heart of gold and all, I'm gonna let them slide, just this once. As a favor between new friends."

She glanced between them, with an unreadable smile on her face. Nobody else saw fit to respond. "So, here's the little deal I'm gonna offer you. You think I'm too 'crazy' to work for, now's your chance to head for the door. You stick around, you're mine for the next few weeks, and I'll make your wildest dreams come true. How about it?"

Touko subtly shifted her posture. It became obvious that she was holding something. Something gun-shaped. The length that was illuminated had an outside world chemical hazard label on it, and a red light blinked in the shadows. Rumi had been strongly considering leaving, but now suspected that it would be a very bad idea indeed. Touko had invited them to _head_ for the door, but she'd never said they'd reach it in one piece.

"No? Everybody's sticking around? One big peachy family? That just warms my heart." Touko shouldered the weapon, still grinning. "Let's get down to business."

* * *

Like most kappa, Nitori was either very good at making plans, or very bad at it, depending on your point of view.

Kappa made plans in the same way that they made devices.

A kappa never simply _made_ a device. Certainly, they often set out to do so. Say that a kappa set out to invent a better coffeemaker. She might start out intending to give it a sensor for detecting empty mugs, so that it would automatically brew more coffee when it was needed. Of course, if it could brew coffee by itself, delivering it would be even better, so she'd add that in while she was at it. After three weeks of development, what had started as a simple coffeemaker would now have a timer, a sensor for detecting empty mugs, articulated legs, a levitation system for getting over obstacles, a roasting and grinding chamber, three reservoirs for flavored add-ins, a voice recognition system, a biometric scanner to limit coffee-drinking to authorized users, and an apparatus for firing electrified darts at would-be coffee thieves.

As a species who collectively worked a lot of late nights, kappa took their coffee very seriously.

Nitori's plans for the tower were no less complex. She'd found the thing two days earlier, when she'd spotted gleaming metal on the slope of the mountain and gone to investigate. This had been followed by two full days of examination, some repairs, and otherwise getting the thing into working condition. She'd come up with quite a lot of ideas in that time.

First and most obviously, she was going to find out if this was one of those outside world cellphone towers she'd heard about. Kappa-made radios were a standard form of communication among the youkai of the mountain, and if she could extend their range for a modest fee, she'd never be short on cash again.

If it wasn't a phone tower, she'd decided, whatever signals it did handle still had to be pretty valuable if they justified building this big thing, so she'd just have to find some way to profit off of those. Or maybe she could convert it to handle a different type of signal and do something interesting with that. If not, there were a lot of electronics inside the building—she could probably salvage them and make herself some nifty new inventions. If the inventions were good enough, the lump sum of cash would be better than a steady profit from the tower. Or, she could salvage the good stuff and sell the building to somebody else, after tearing down the tower and selling it for scrap. Or if there were no buyers for the building, she could use it as a new workshop. Conversely, she could tear down the building, sell the contents, put a ladder and seat on the tower, and sell it to the tengu as an observation post. _Or_...

Dozens of options were lined up in her head, strung together in a massive flowchart of possibilities that would look like a bad drawing of spaghetti to an untrained observer. Whatever the tower did, she could profit off of it. Whatever parts of it were unnecessary, she could repurpose. Whatever she didn't need, she could always sell. And whatever combination of these options seemed like it would get the most money, she'd find it. It was her pride as a kappa.

She pushed the door open and led Sanae into the building. Big cabinets full of electronics lined the walls of the entry room. They weren't the new stuff the outside world was making, slim quiet rectangles full of circuits. No, these were the real deal, old machinery, with big chunky buttons, wires strung across the floor, and blinking lights all over. The way electronics were _supposed_ to look, in Nitori's opinion.

It wasn't in great condition. It smelled like mildew and dust. Mice had chewed through some of the cords, and stains below the single window showed where rain had leaked in for years. Packaging, spare supplies, and other odds and ends covered the floor up to knee deep in places, and Nitori was sort of afraid to move it and find out what was under it.

"Hmm..." Sanae said, as she walked from cabinet to cabinet. Nitori had no idea what she was looking for, but her inspection seemed pretty methodical. "What about this one? Can you get this one working?"

"Sure, hold on."

Nitori picked her way through the junk to the cabinet Sanae was pointing at. She slid her backpack to the ground with a wall-rattling _thud_. Soon, she'd pulled out all the equipment she needed and was inspecting the cabinet's guts, a flashlight in one hand and a multimeter in the other. One dud capacitor, a cracked vacuum tube, and a few connectors that had popped out of place. Easy enough to fix, for now. She'd found a box of spare vacuum tubes in the back, but once those ran out, she was going to have a real pain finding replacements. For now, it was ten minutes of work to fix things up.

"Hmm, okay, now..." Sanae made her way back to a cardboard box on the floor. It was overflowing with reels of black tape, which had somehow gotten through the decades without getting tangled. She plucked one out, raising a cloud of dust. "Can you find the machine these fit on and hook it up?"

"Eh? Those things? I don't really see what that has to do with phones."

"Just trust me! I think I know what this place is for, but I need to do a test to be sure."

"Eh, alright," Nitori said, and began searching through the machines.

* * *

Touko was not what anybody would have called an imposing figure. She was short even by kappa standards. Her hair hung in a pair of mousy black pigtails. Her figure was so slim that her dress still practically looked like a tent on her.

Even so, there was something about her. Maybe it was the giant black boots she wore, making a _thud_ on the cavern floor with every step. Maybe it was the way she swaggered as she walked, with her thumbs tucked into belt loops near her waist. Maybe it was the slight crow's feet by her eyes, hinting that she was very old even by kappa standards. If Rumi had ever seen outside world movies, Touko would have reminded her of a corrupt small town sheriff from the kind of movie with too many car chases. As it was, she mostly put Rumi in mind of a very small and angry dog.

Touko walked most of a slow lap around the table before she spoke up, like a shark circling its prey. "So. Do you all know why I asked you to come here?"

"A job," Ririsa grunted. She didn't sound like she expected to have much patience for the rest of this conversation. "I heard the pay's good."

"Oh, the pay isn't just 'good.' But that's not what I'm askin'. What I'm asking is, why you, instead of somebody else? I could've had any kappa I wanted down here, with the kind of money I'm offering. Why's it you, then?"

A few moments passed in silence. "Orisa and I haven't had any money in weeks," Maeri said. "I can't imagine Ririsa is in any better position, and—" her gaze momentarily shifted to Rumi "—nobody wants to hire a girl who might not leave your house in one piece."

"I get hired a lot!" Rumi protested. "Just not... lately."

Maeri ignored her. "We're desperate," she summarized. "By working with us, you guaranteed that we would all be willing to show up and hear you out."

"Sounds like you think I've got an awfully low opinion of you." Touko did not sound disapproving. "But you aren't wrong. See, I was pretty careful about who I pitched this job offer to. If other kappa got wind of it, they'd all be wanting a piece of the pie. Five people. That's all I need."

"Yeah, great," Ririsa said. "So are you going to tell us what we're here for?"

"I don't much appreciate bein' rushed," Touko said, but seemed to be in too high of spirits to let it slow her down. "What if I told you girls there was a way for us to steal the human village?"

Nobody responded for a moment. "Um," Rumi finally said. "A village is pretty... big."

"Yep, it is. And I'm not just talkin' money or anything like that. The whole damn pot. Money, technology, food, weapons, treasure... anything you want, if it's in the village, it's ours. And once we've got it, we can keep it for good. The humans won't know who took it, and they sure aren't getting it back. Heck, we'll have their houses and businesses, so what would they even stop us with?"

"Humans don't have much," Orisa said. "Poor. Too dumb for technology."

"They have enough, though," Maeri said. "Most of the commerce in Gensokyo passes through the village, and a lot of the industry..."

Maeri rose from the table, and Rumi got her first good look at her outfit. It was big. It was puffy. It was black, and it had enough lace for any five lesser dresses. Dozens of white bows adorned the sides, and in the back, a single massive one dominated them all. Somehow, the tailor of this garment had still managed to fit plenty of pockets on it. It was a strange enough display that the entire room sat in awed silence as Maeri dug through them.

Maeri seemed oblivious. After a few tries, she withdrew a heavily-stained, crumpled notebook and flipped through it until she found what she was looking for. "... forty-seven point eight percent of Gensokyo's wealth is in the human village at any one time. The money alone would leave us set for life. Assuming, of course, that we could actually steal it."

"A village is kind of heavy, the last time I checked," Ririsa said.

"Since I'm kind and all, I'm going to set this up so you don't even need to take it anywhere," Touko said. "I'll deliver the village right to your doorstep, all metaphorical-like, and you can grab whatever you want, when you want it."

There were some confused glances around the room, but nobody seemed to be able to find a further objection. Ririsa finally sighed and said, "So you're telling me that we can take over the human village, nobody can stop us, and nobody can hunt us down, with five whole people."

"Yep. Why don't we run down the list? You've got me, first of all. Some of you might know I dabble in weaponsmithing." Touko patted her oversized gun. It shifted in place, and something inside gave a low hiss of pressure. Rumi wasn't sure what it did, and she was certain she didn't want to find out.

"Maeri," Touko continued. "She's good at planning, and she knows the human village better than anybody around. Anything we do down there during our preparations, she's figuring it out. Orisa, she's..."

"Only here because of Maeri," Orisa murmured.

Touko held her in a withering glare for just a moment. "... Orisa's our tailor. We're gonna be needing a lot of disguises, and they've gotta hold up if we get ourselves into a fight. Ririsa, you're one of the best kappa to have around in a fight, so if we get into a scrap, you and me will handle it."

"I thought you said nobody could stop us?" Ririsa said. "Fighting us doesn't sound that helpless."

"Oh, no, that's the beautiful thing. We do this right, there won't be a single shot fired. But if something comes up, that's why you're here."

Ririsa grunted in response, but she looked pleased at the idea.

"So, um," Rumi said. "If you aren't fighting much, does that mean you need me to build things? I haven't gotten hired for it in a long time...!"

"Yep, you got it." Touko gave a sharp grin, and before Rumi knew it, drifted over to sling an arm companionably over her shoulder. "You've got the most important job of all. Got a few things I need you to make."

Rumi beamed, but her pleasure was cut off by a scoff from Ririsa. "Any kappa can build stuff. Why are we going to a girl who ripped off her own arm?"

"We need to be able to move a lot of dirt real quick," Touko said. She straightened up, and thankfully removed her hand from Rumi's shoulder. "But we can't use bombs. Gotta convince the rest of Gensokyo that we're not kappa. So, that's where Rumi comes in. She can do that kinda thing, can't you?"

"Bombs that don't look like bombs...?" Rumi frowned thoughtfully. "Huh, probably... A teleporter might work, but it would have to be really big. Or I could _try_ some kind of mass-eraser..."

"Mass-eraser," Orisa repeated, skeptically.

"It's, um, my ability!" Rumi said. "I can make all kinds of stuff! As long as the outside world _doesn't_ think it should work. Because, um, then the concept turns into fantasy and it comes to Gensokyo or something? I'm not really sure how it... works. I can just kind of... make them happen. … but I have a policy of no teleporters, time machines, faster-than-light travel, perpetual motion devices, or, um, flutes."

"What's so dangerous about a flute?" Maeri asked.

"Huh, well, that depends on how long your tongue is. I still have the prototype, if you want to try it..."

"Okay, hold up," Ririsa said. "If she's any good at this, what's with the missing arm?"

"Er, well, I was testing my teleporter, right...?"

"Right."

"It, um, malfunctioned. Also you had to reach inside to hit the off switch, which was actually kinda a bad idea. It worked, though! My arm got teleported away! … so did the wall, and, um, most of the topsoil..."

Ririsa held her gaze for a moment, then relented, sighing and rolling her eyes. "Alright, so, let's say this dipshit prodigy you dug up can build us these not-bombs you want. What then? We sneak into the village, blow half the place up, and loot it while the humans are running? Can only carry so much before they catch up."

"Nah, nah." Touko scoffed. "You're thinking too small, way too small, my friend. I did promise you half the village. Whole thing, all yours. Everyone wins, right?"

"Except the humans," Orisa muttered. A chuckle ran around the room.

Touko walked over and settled into the final empty seat, at the head of the table. "Here's what we're gonna do. Maeri, pull out the maps so we can make it real clear."

Maeri and Touko laid the maps out on the table, and launched into an explanation of their plan.

Rumi listened on, in horrified fascination.

* * *

"There," Nitori said. "I sure hope you know what you're doing. That was a pain in the butt."

Getting the machine that the tape reels fit on—tape player? Recorder? Sanae wasn't sure what it was actually called—working again had taken more effort than Sanae had expected. Nitori had needed to rip the guts out to repair it, and now they were strewn across a countertop. It was a messy assortment of wires, adapters, and things that Sanae was pretty sure were vacuum tubes, and it tapered down over its length to the little assembly where a spindle now held the tape reel.

"Well, we're going to find out, right?"

Along one wall was a television set built into a cabinet. Sanae turned it on, and the screen erupted into static. Thankfully, no sound accompanied it. "Is everything all set?"

"Yeah, sure, it's running. Let's get this over with."

"Right! Here goes."

Sanae turned back to the tape player and pressed the PLAY button. Something in the machine's guts gave a sickly-sounding buzz. Slowly, though, the reel started turning with a soft clatter of gears.

Nothing happened. The TV showed only static.

"Um, hmm." Sanae looked over the cabinet. It had dozens of buttons, and any one of them could be causing issues. She adjusted one labeled 'tracking,' but there was no change. She fiddled with a few knobs. She checked on the tape, but it seemed to be navigating its maze of spindles in tape heads in a way that looked more-or-less correct.

"Oh, wait," Nitori said. "There's a broken connection." She fiddled in the machine and lifted connectors, then fitted them together. They slid into each other with a soft _pop_ of electricity.

The static on the television disappeared. It was replaced by a video of a man.

Well, mostly. There was still a lot of static overlaying it, and the image drifted side-to-side every few seconds. Sanae could still make out most of the details. The man looked like a very serious type, middle-aged, with glasses and a balding spot on his head. He was sitting at a desk and speaking solemnly toward the camera, not that there was any sound.

They studied the image for a moment. Nitori frowned in confusion. "Who the heck is this?"

Onscreen, the man glanced toward the camera, shuffled a few papers, and read from them. A grin spread on Sanae's face.

"I figured it out! This is a TV station!"

"Huh?"

"It's like..." Sanae excitedly thrust her finger toward the TV. "The station is sending this out, so anybody with one of these machines can see it!"

"That seems like a lot of work to show people some bald human."

"No, um, it's..."

"This isn't some—" Nitori shifted uncomfortably. "—romance thing, is it? Is he what humans find attractive?"

"What? Ew, no! I mean... I think he's reading the news. Just, you can't hear it because there's no sound. He talks about all the things that happened that day, and he reads it in front of a camera, and they record it on this tape! And then it gets broadcast all over, like a newspaper that gets delivered everywhere at once. There are other things too, like stories, and weather reports and stuff!"

Nitori frowned, glancing between Sanae and the man onscreen. "So it sends a signal out, and anybody who receives it can watch this?"

"Yep!"

"Then what's the point? You can't make any money if you give it away for free."

"Oh, um. Advertising and things, I think? I doubt it would work in Gensokyo, though. Nobody has TVs in the first place, so nobody would want to pay for advertisements on it. Not that there are many businesses who would want to run ads, anyway..."

"Advertising, huh?" Nitori crossed her arms, considering that. "So to sum it up, this entire building was made to send out pictures for free, using boxes that nobody in Gensokyo owns, to sell a service that nobody in Gensokyo wants."

"Hmm. Yep. That's pretty accurate, I guess."

Nitori gave a belabored sigh. "Well, at least now I know. In that case, I guess that's all I need you for. No reason for you to stick around, huh? Sorry it didn't go anywhere."

"Yeah..." Sanae gave a slow nod, glancing around the room. "It really is a shame... It would be cool to have TV in Gensokyo, but I don't think just finding a station is enough."

Nitori hit the power button on the tape player, and it whirred to a stop. "Eh, not your problem. Have a good night, Sanae."


	2. Chapter 2

Lately, sleep had been a very rare luxury in Rumi's world.

When Touko had found her, Rumi had lived in a tiny shack next to the river. It had been little more than a lean-to, a roof that more or less kept the rain out unless it was windy, and walls that didn't keep much of _anything_ out. She'd gotten used to sleeping on a sack stuffed with straw—itchy, wet, and prickly. She had no intruder alarm or locks, so the only thing stopping a bunch of fairies from carting off everything she owned was learning to be a very light sleeper.

So, when a booming echo of "WAKE UP!" filled the air like a decree from the heavens, she obeyed pretty instantly.

Rumi jolted upright in bed, and blinked at the darkness in confusion.

For a few seconds, she wasn't sure where she was. Then, she remembered—Touko's cavern hideout. She'd accepted the job offer. Considering her circumstances, she would have been foolish not to. Furthermore, she was on actual dry cloth, in a room with a... well, not a door, but there was a curtain draped across the entrance to this particular branch of the cavern. It was the closest thing to civilization she'd seen in years.

Rumi patted along the floor with her hand, until it settled onto a familiar-feeling piece of cold metal. She hefted her prosthetic arm off of the ground and pushed it against the socket on her shoulder. It took a few shoves before the connectors all lined up, and it settled into place with a sharp _click_. She gave her fingers a few experimental wiggles to make sure they were working. The lighter that she'd hidden in the thumb flicked on unprompted, and she swatted at the flame a few times until it went out. Not enough time to fix it right now.

Now with two working arms, Rumi pushed herself up to standing and carefully made her way across the room, until her hand found the lantern. She fumbled with it until she managed to turn it on and light the room.

The cave network that Touko had claimed for herself stretched deep, deep into the mountainside. Somewhere down there, it probably hooked up with the underground, where the oni were rumored to be hiding. Up here, it just meant that they had plenty of room to work with. Every single conspirator in the group had been able to claim a chamber of their own, most of them along a single branch in the cave. Rumi had been given the one farthest from the rest of the group; "at least one blast radius away," in Ririsa's words.

On the upside, it meant that Rumi probably had plenty of time to get ready. She could hear distant conversation closer to the center of the cave, which probably meant that Touko was still pretty far off.

When Touko had found her, Rumi's riverside shack hadn't held much. A small workbench, which she barely trusted herself to use for the first few months. A few changes of clothes. A set of tools. A few spare parts for her arm. And, not much else. She'd piled all of it into her new room, and it still felt cavernously empty when she walked across it.

There were worse problems to have, really.

There was a mirror propped against one wall, and Rumi reluctantly made her way over to it to get dressed. Living alone in the wilderness for a few months had sort of lowered her standards for things like personal grooming. Now, she wasn't anybody's mental image of a kappa. She was too tall, and gangly. Her hair was a pretty white when it was clean, but it was never clean these days, and she'd cut it with a knife, leaving a shaggy mess on top of her head. She looked like a mop, in her own opinion. A _sad_ mop. She didn't even wear the normal kappa uniform anymore. It had gotten too torn up after the first few months of her banishment, so these days she settled for a barely-stained sundress she was pretty sure had come from a youkai attack victim.

Footsteps approached outside, and Rumi made a quick attempt to straighten her hair with her fingers. She'd just barely finished when Touko pushed aside the curtain that served as her door. She stepped inside, followed by Orisa, who was carrying a rather large basket.

"Well, look at you, all chipper n' alert so early!" Touko said. "I just about had to drag the others out of bed by their hair."

"Their hair...? Huh... I think their arms or legs would work better."

Touko ignored the misunderstanding with the slightest sigh. She gestured at the workbench. "Get anything done on those bombs yet?"

"I have! Um, or, well, I figured out what _won't_ work. I tried building a shrink ray, but that would take a lot of energy. And the last time I tried to build a time machine, I woke up the next day and there was a note on it that, um, just said, 'NO.'"

"So what? We're already robbin' people, it's not like anybody can stop us."

"It was in my own handwriting."

There were a few seconds of silence as Touko scrutinized Rumi's face, looking increasingly uncertain. In the end, she capitulated with a grumble. "Well, you better figure it out soon. It won't be time for us to bomb anything for a while, but when it comes, I want you to be good and ready. Got it?"

Rumi gave a hurried nod.

"Now, then. Orisa, show her what you've got."

Orisa's mumbled response was too quiet for Rumi to make out, but she reached into her basket and pulled out a few items. There was a white jacket, in a vaguely uniform variety. There was a thin, almost invisible wire, with a pair of fuzzy white ears on top. There was a red mask with a long nose, a tokin, and there was a belt with a long, fluffy white thing hanging from it. After a few seconds of staring at it, Rumi realized it was a tail.

"... a wolf costume...?"

"Wolf _tengu_ ," Orisa corrected her with a scowl.

"Yep," Touko said. "Me and the others are all dressing up as crows, but since you have white hair and all, we thought you could pass for a wolf. It makes the disguises work better if we've got some variety in there. Makes it look like a real group of tengu, you know?"

"I guess..." Rumi took the ears and settled them onto her head, running a finger across a fuzzy ear. She was going to have to resist the urge to pet herself. "They're really soft..."

Orisa gave the ghost of a smile. "Outside world cloth. Acrylic. Cashmere would be better, but hard to get."

"And." Touko reached into the basket, and pulled out a crossbow. She thrust it unceremoniously into Rumi's arms. "My own design. Not as good as the one I keep for myself, but you shouldn't need to be shootin' anything. It's just for show."

"Huh..." Rumi aimed it toward the ceiling and looked along the sights. She had no idea what she was looking at. She'd never used a crossbow before. Or anything more dangerous than a screwdriver, for that matter.

"Not many tengu use this kinda thing, but damn if we're gonna run around with swords and bows like a bunch of animals."

"Huh... Do you think humans will believe it?"

"Well, see." Touko stepped up alongside her, studying Rumi's reflection in the mirror. "The average human, they don't see tengu as often as you or me. If they see somebody with fuzzy ears and a red mask, they're gonna think 'wolf tengu,' no questions about it. They might notice the ears and stuff are fake if they get a real good look, but that's why we're not going to be loiterin' around anywhere with a lot of humans."

"The arm," Orisa said.

All three of them looked to Rumi's metal arm.

"Humans don't have those," she continued.

"Ah... yeah, you're right," Touko said. She looked to Rumi. "Can't let nobody see that thing."

"It's... um, it's my arm," Rumi said, clutching it protectively to her chest.

"It's not 'your arm' if you take it off every night when you sleep. Besides, tengu don't make this kind of thing.." Touko gave it a flick; Rumi could feel the little metallic _ping_ in her shoulder. "Orisa, think you can make her a long-sleeved jacket?"

"Mmh." Orisa gave the slightest sigh of consideration. "Wolf tengu uniforms have them. Long sleeves, draping. Good for fighting."

"Whatever. Just make sure you sort it out by tonight."

"Tonight...?" Rumi looked up from clutching her arm. "What happens tonight?"

"What do you think?" Touko grinned widely and reached over to flick a fuzzy ear. "If we're gonna convince the village they're bein' terrorized by tengu, we've got some tengu terrorizing to do."

* * *

"Heeeeey!" Nitori's voice echoed through the morning air. "Hello? Anybody in?"

No answer came from within the Moriya shrine. She rattled the door a few times, but that didn't make any difference. Since she was on-edge, she threw in some firm knocks. Still no answer.

"Nitori?" A voice called in the distance, from somewhere behind the shrine. "We're back here."

Nitori made her way around the shrine. Behind it, a path led down the short slope to the banks of the lake. A stiff breeze hit her face as soon as she rounded the corner, the wind picking up plenty of speed over the flat surface at this altitude. It stretched out toward the horizon, the largest body of water in Gensokyo. Frankly, it made Nitori a bit uncomfortable. No kappa liked standing somewhere that they were clearly visible from kilometers away, water or no water.

Farther down the shore, Sanae and Kanako were bent over with cloth sacks, while Suwako sat on a rock farther up. All three watched idly as Nitori made her way over to them. "You could have left a sign or something," she huffed, out of breath.

"We don't usually get visitors this early. Sorry!" Sanae said.

"Anyway... I'm not interrupting something, am I?"

"Just cleaning the shores of the lake," Suwako said. She leaned forward and mimed rubbing two coins together. "But for a small donation to the shrine, we might forgive you."

" _Sanae_ and I are cleaning the shores of the lake," Kanako said, dropping a piece of driftwood into her bag. Dryly, she added, "Suwako's sack mysteriously vanished three minutes after we started."

"An honest-to-goodness divine miracle," Suwako said, reclining on her rock. "Might have to enshrine that sack if we ever find it."

"If you're here about the cable lift, we haven't started the next phase of construction yet," Kanako continued, without looking up from her work. "We'll take bids in a few months."

Sanae straightened up, wiping her hands off, and shot Nitori a slightly apologetic smile. "You aren't interrupting anything. We're just making sure the lake looks nice, since it's one of the shrine's goshintai! Technically, um, I guess Lady Suwako's soul is in it. Did you need something?"

"Eh? Oh, right." The tangent had been long enough to derail Nitori's—admittedly disjointed at the moment—train of thought, but it didn't take long to recover her mood. She drew herself up and tried to work her way up to a sales pitch.

It took some effort, since she'd seen better days. Her clothes were blotched with grease and burns, and one of her pigtails and come undone. There was a makeshift bandage on her arm made out of what looked like a page out of an owner's manual. She had the sharp-edged, slightly manic look of somebody who had been awake all night, and was only kept going by caffeine and spite.

"Iiiiii just came by with a bit of an offer for you!"

"Huh? An offer for what?"

"I want to buy any equipment you have for this television stuff."

"Television stuff...? Well, we do have some in the basement... oh! Does that mean you found something to do with the tower?"

"Yep! I'm going to run a TV station. Like you talked about last night."

"A TV station." Kanako paused, and finally looked up. "In Gensokyo?"

"Yep!"

"When we haven't even run power to most of Youkai Mountain, let alone the village?"

"That's right."

"It's certainly a... bold plan."

"You'll be the first one to corner a market that doesn't even exist," Suwako said.

"Yeah, well, laugh it up while you still can!" Nitori let her backpack drop to the ground, making a small crater in the sand where it came to rest. Once the aftershocks had died down, she opened the top and reached inside. "What you don't realize is..."

With a grunt, she hefted something out and sat it on the ground. "I have _this_."

It was a box made out of metal, all sharp edges and corners. Every flat surface was studded with screw heads. It had very obviously been cobbled together in a hurry by somebody with more engineering skill than artistic talent. But, if you knew where to look, it had all the important bits on it. There was a power button and a volume knob, a wire grid on one end that had to be a speaker, a loop antenna poking from the top, and a glass screen on the front. If it wasn't a television, it was at least a television's post-apocalyptic cousin.

"Huuuuh." Sanae leaned in and gave the box a cautious poke. "Pretty neat! It's very, er... pointy. Does it work?"

"Heh, 'does it work?'" With a smug grin, Nitori pressed the power button. The device hummed to life, and the grainy image of the newscaster from the day before rose to the screen. "... and the premier," he said, his voice crackling with static. "This comes only weeks after the reformed Chinese government announced its support for the revolutionaries, and pledged—"

Nitori turned the volume knob down. The man's voice lowered to a muted whisper, but he continued speaking. She waited a few more moments for her accomplishment to sink in, then crossed her arms, standing next to the television proudly. "And there are five more just like this back at the station. See, you're thinking about it like a human. People not having TVs doesn't mean that there's nobody to watch the station. It means that anybody who wants to watch it has to buy a TV from me first!"

"But the power..."

"Batteries! They're easy to make. Free exchanges when they run out! And if they want a spare, I'll sell those too! It's like owning a mint!" Nitori looked like she might start cackling with glee at all the business opportunities.

"I guess these things are only hard if it isn't a kappa doing them," Suwako commented, in a voice that was so casual that the implied sarcasm was all the more biting.

Sanae was deep in thought now, looking down at the television, her lips pursed. "That's a pretty good start, but there's a lot more to it than that. Like, you'd still need more things to air! Even if you bought all the movies and stuff we have, that's only a few days of material, maybe. People would get tired of watching the same things over and over really fast, don't you think?"

"... uh." Nitori didn't have an answer for that one.

Sanae pushed on, emboldened. "And you can't just put on a bunch of tapes and walk away, either! You need to have somebody to announce things! And arrange the shows in ways that people will want to watch! Like, if you're showing a series, you need to play it at the same time every week! You need, um, programming blocks?"

"Blocks...?"

" _Blocks_ ," Sanae repeated, with a firm nod. "And news and things! Talk shows! Traffic reports!"

"Er, traffic reports?"

"Well, okay, probably not traffic reports. But you get the idea."

"Yeah, er, I think I do. You've obviously put a lot of thought into this."

"I was thinking about it a little after I came home last night. Having a TV station in Gensokyo would be pretty neat, but when you think about it, it would take a lot of hard work."

"Uh-huh. I'm kind of getting that impression. You seem to know a lot about it, though."

"I mean, not a ton, but..."

Nitori was already moving closer. She sidled up and wrapped an arm around Sanae's back, trying not to be too self-conscious of the fact that she probably smelled like the floor of a garage. "And that's why, in addition to buying your equipment, I, um, came here to offer you the role of... general manager! Of the TV station. Obviously."

"... manager?"

"Manager! And announcer," Nitori hurriedly added. "I don't want to do all that talking."

Sanae stared down at her in disbelief. For a few seconds, she was so still that Nitori was afraid she'd given her a heart attack. "A-ah, well, I don't know... It sounds like a lot of work, and the shrine and all...!"

"Well, I could... give you a cut of the profits. That would basically be like getting more donations, right?"

"I don't really know how to run a TV station..."

"Probably nobody in Gensokyo does," Suwako said. "That means you're the most qualified, right?"

"There's a lot of work to do around the shrine, though! I need to put together some sermons for the village this weekend, and there's cleaning, and..."

"Sanae," Kanako said. "Do you _want_ to do this?"

"I... I don't know. I think so? It seems like it would be pretty fun..."

"Then do it."

"... really?"

"Really. Suwako and I can handle the shrine. I kept it running by myself until you showed up, remember? Besides, you're young. Some more experience with life outside of the shrine would be good for you."

"Yeah, us young types need to stay on the move," Suwako said. "It's only old ladies like Kanako that can afford to settle down and—" She was cut off by a thrown piece of driftwood.

"You're sure it's okay?"

"I'm sure," Kanako said. "Of course... if Nitori is borrowing our only shrine maiden, I'm sure she wouldn't mind if you gave a religious lecture on the TV every now and then?"

Kanako gave Nitori a very pointed look. Nitori suddenly had an inkling of how a mouse felt when it saw a hungry snake looking down at it. "A-ah, yeah, sure, good idea! A sermon to all of Gensokyo at once! How nice for... you... but only occasionally, okay? The shows are the main selling point here."

"Of course. We wouldn't want to take up too much of your airtime," Kanako said. The hungry snake went back to sleep.

"So..." Nitori turned back to Sanae. "Will you do it, then?"

Sanae crossed her arms and frowned down at the water as she considered. "It does seem like it could be pretty interesting... and it could be fun to introduce Gensokyo to a lot of things nobody's seen before... Alright!" She thrust an arm into the air. "I'll do it!"

* * *

The trip back to the TV station was rather less rushed than the first time Sanae had gone there. For one thing, Nitori no longer seemed quite so frantic to get back. For another, Sanae was pushing a hand cart, loaded with every piece of television paraphernalia that she'd been able to dig up from the shrine's storage. A television, two VCRs, a DVD player, a box of mixed tapes, a box of DVDs, and a tangled mess of adapters and cords.

The precarious load wobbled and shifted with every bump the cart went over... and going down youkai mountain, there were a lot of bumps. She took her time, carefully picking her way around them. Nitori scouted ahead, finding the smoothest routes downhill and clearing some of the worst underbrush.

The trip would barely be ten minutes in good conditions, but this time, it took the better part of an hour before the station came back into sight.

Nitori had been busy. There were a few signs scattered around the perimeter, with still-drying paint reading, "'NO TRESPASSING,' and 'PROPERTY OF NITORI KAWASHIRO.' A larger sign, near the front door, read, 'GENSOKYO TELEVISION STATION, MAIN OFFICE.'

Inside, the place had changed even more. The boxes, spare parts, loose wires, and trash that had filled the front room had mostly gotten hauled away or sorted out, leaving it far roomier. The electronic cabinets were all opened up, their innards laid bare to the world for the first time in decades, and wires crisscrossed the room to hook them all together. Work lights had been hung from the ceiling. Spools of cable, boxes of vacuum tubes, and mechanical parts were heaped on a shelf in one corner. On what had probably been the plant's reception desk, an electronic device the size of a refrigerator lay disassembled. The mildew-y smell now struggled to be noticed past a thick tang of ozone.

"Wow!" Sanae said, as she ran into the middle of the room. "It looks like a mad scientist's lair or something."

"I don't know what that means, but it took me half the night to get it looking like this. I almost hired some youkai to handle it." Nitori yawned and shut the door behind them. "It still doesn't all work, but it's close enough for now."

"Yeah, it's pretty neat! You did a good job."

Sanae walked over to the wall and looked over some of the electronic cabinets that Nitori had fixed up. They were all covered in dozens of knobs, switches, meters, and lights, most of which had cryptic labels like 'HIGH GAIN SQUARE FILTER.' Only the fear that she'd irreparably break something prevented her from experimenting with them.

Farther down the wall, the ancient tape player from the day before was installed in its rightful place again. Now that all the junk was clear, she could make out the storage space next to it. Wire shelves ran floor-to-ceiling, completely full. She dug through them, but found nothing but empty boxes and spare parts. Which meant...

"Did you throw out all those tapes we found yesterday?"

"They're around somewhere. I watched some of them, but they were all like that. Old humans talking about... countries and things. Do you really think anybody would want to watch them?"

"I guess not..." Sanae gave the shelves another disappointed glance. "It would have been nice if there were some shows. Although I guess those would be pretty old, too..." Thinking about it that way, Sanae was no longer quite so disappointed to have not found anything. It might have helped a bit, but any shows left on technology like that would probably be so old that they'd make _Suwako_ nostalgic.

"Do you really think we'd need them?"

"I wasn't kidding about all that stuff earlier! TV stations need a lot of shows to work with, and, um, hosts, and _logos_ and things. Hmm. I bet Sumireko could get us a lot of movies, though. Maybe we could find a few more at Kourindou or in the village..."

"Eh, if you think we need to. Just... remember this is a business, okay? We can't afford to spend all the money on that."

"They're cheap anyway! Even when I left the outside world, you could send an entire album across the world in an hour or two. I bet it's even easier now."

Sanae had to admit that Nitori had a point, though. This was a business. That meant finances, and pay, and _budgets_. Sanae was pretty good at math, but it sounded like a lot of work. Looking over the station was making her realize just how many questions she had, too. What did all these devices even _do_? Was a TV station supposed to have people in it all day and all night, or did they just leave the shows running when they weren't around? How many people did it take to run one?

It was kind of scary, but it was a good kind of scary. She felt like the day before the shrine had moved to Gensokyo, when she'd been waiting and knowing that big, big changes were in her future.

Once she'd examined the lobby to her heart's content, they stepped through a door to the main room of the station. It looked like some kind of studio. One end was mostly clear, with a tripod-mounted camera positioned in front of a desk. Actually, she recognized the view from the news videos that they'd dug up. The other wall of the room was lined with smaller, messier desks that looked like they were meant to be office space, and near the front of the room was the massive contraption for the—host? DJ? What did you even call the person who played shows at a TV station? It was a huge desk that covered half the wall, and its surface was nearly covered by a slightly more modern-looking array of switches and knobs. From its center rose a microphone. She leaned in and gave it a tap. "Hmm... does this stuff work?"

"I tested some of it last night, but only a few pieces..." Nitori bent over the desk and flicked a few switches with a practiced air that suggested she'd memorized them. Power hummed through the device. A few screens along its surface flickered on. Nitori stepped over to the camera and turned it around on its tripod, fiddling with the controls. "See if you can figure out how to switch this thing on."

"Ah, um..."

Sanae looked over the array of controls on the desk. There was an even bigger variety of possibilities than the cabinets in the previous room had held. She felt like she was sitting at the bridge of a spaceship. Still, some of the buttons had almost-comprehensible labels, like 'CAMERA 1' and 'EXT VIDEO FEED.' She tried CAMERA 1 for now.

As soon as the button clicked, the static disappeared from the screens on the desk. Now, they showed the camera's view of the studio wall.

"Oh! Neat!"

A pair of elderly headphones were sitting next to the microphone. Sanae blew a heavy layer of dust off of them and slid them onto her head, then leaned forward to the microphone and pressed the 'TALK' button near its base.

"Um, hello?"

Her voice echoed back through the headphones: "Um, hello?"

"Hello!" Sanae said, more enthusiastically this time.

"Echoooooooo..." In Sanae's defense, it had been a long time since she'd interacted with electronics.

"What are you doing?" Nitori said, barely audible through the headphones.

"Just testing it!"

"Well, I'm glad it works, because I don't have the parts to repair that thing. So..." Nitori walked over and leaned against the desk. "That stuff you brought has enough shows on it to get us started, right?"

"Hmm? Yeah, it should last for a day or two. I guess it isn't too big of a deal if we repeat a little at first."

"I still have some repairs to do, but the station's in good enough condition to transmit. That's all that really matters, right? So, why don't we make sure we can get some of this stuff hooked up, then go down to the village and sell some TVs today? If we leave soon, there's still enough time to broadcast some stuff when we get back."

"... today? You mean, like, do the first broadcast _today_?"

"Huh? Yeah, sure. It's just playing a bunch of pre-recorded stuff, and hooking up those machines you brought should be a breeze for a kappa. We have to start sometime, right?"

"Well, yeah, but..." But Sanae hadn't even thought about all of this before this morning. But she felt like Gensokyo's first public TV broadcast should be a special occasion. But she'd never sold anything in her life, and had no idea how to explain the concept of telecommunications to a human villager who thought that flashlights were high technology.

Fortunately, Sanae's mouth was usually a few seconds ahead of her brain, so instead of any of these, the response she gave was, "Sure! Why not?"

* * *

It hadn't been a very busy day around Suzunaan.

Theoretically, there were worse things than a slow day. The store wasn't tight on money, and these days, Kosuzu was learning to appreciate peace and quiet—no scheming youkai coming in to manipulate humans to their own ends, no curses causing havoc, nobody popping out of books, no dire portents surfacing. A store that sold books containing the souls of tengu and dragons didn't have the luxury of _normal_ days, but today had been a routine kind of abnormal.

Just, it left Kosuzu a little bored. She'd spent half the day reading, and another half dusting bookshelves, reshelving returns, and making small talk with Akyuu. When she heard footsteps approaching, she was half asleep, and had to force herself to appear more alert than she felt as she perked up. "Oh, welcome to Suzunaan!"

The footsteps hesitated, before Sanae peeked through the curtain in the doorway. "Thanks...? Normally people wait until I'm inside."

"It's been really slow," Kosuzu said with a sigh. "It's nice to see you, though!"

"Oh, thank you!" Sanae stepped the rest of the way through the curtain, making her way into the store.

… and Nitori followed, with an overloaded hand cart behind her.

Kosuzu had never knowingly met many species of youkai before, but she'd read enough to identify most of them by sight. A bit short... wearing a weird utilitarian dress with too many pockets...

"Miss Sanae! There's a kappa sneaking up on you!"

"... huh?"

"I'm not _sneaking_ ," Nitori said, shooting Kosuzu an annoyed glance. "Do you think I'd really be pulling a cart around if I was trying to attack people?"

"Er. Well, no, but..."

"Besides, there wouldn't be any point to doing that here," Nitori continued. "Getting shirikodama is all about getting the human underwater before they have a chance to resist. We're half a kilometer from the river. It would be a waste of time."

This did not help soothe Kosuzu's nerves.

"Nitori Kawashiro," Akyuu said. She'd been sitting in the corner of the shop reading a book, but now gave the two an appraising glance before looking to Kosuzu. "And she's telling the truth. Just don't go swimming with her. Although... it _is_ strange to see a youkai walking around this deep in the village at this time of day."

"Nitori's with me!" Sanae said, and stepped over to rest a hand on Nitori's shoulder. "And she's not going to be eating anybody in the village, right?"

Nitori shot her a weary glare. "It used to be, humans thought of kappa as their allies."

"You and I apparently have very different memories of human/kappa relations," Akyuu said.

Kosuzu looked between the three customers uneasily. She almost wished to have the earlier boredom back. At least then, she didn't have to worry about whether or not somebody was secretly planning to eat her organs. "Ah, um, well. Welcome! Can I help you find anything?"

"Oh, no! Actually, me and Nitori came to show _you_ something," Sanae said. "Something really neat!"

Kosuzu glanced toward the cart that Nitori was pulling. Whatever was on it, it was hidden under a sheet. "Oh! Did you bring kappa books to sell?"

"Huh? Nope, even better!"

Sanae grabbed the sheet and dramatically pulled it aside. Before Kosuzu could even get a good look at the devices beneath it, Sanae thrust one into her face.

It was a box. It was a grey box made of metal. There were a few knobs on it, a piece of wire sticking up from the top, and a big piece of glass on the front.

Kosuzu stared at it for a few seconds, trying to make some sense out of it. "I think I saw one of these at Kourindou one time," she said thoughtfully. "You put bread in and it cooks it, right?"

"Huh? No, it's a TV!"

"A... tee vee?" The word meant nothing to Kosuzu.

Akyuu rose from her seat and crossed over to join the group gathered around the thing. With an air of salesmanship, Nitori took up position in front of it, showcasing its many features with a hand. "See, this is your antenna, and this knob controls the volume. Now, there's a cathode ray tube inside, and—"

"But what does it do...?"

"We send out a signal as electromagnetic radiation, and it's modulated to contain information. If you know the right frequency to tune to, you can—"

Seeing the blank look of terror on Kosuzu's face, Sanae intervened. "It lets you see invisible pictures that are floating in the air," she explained with a smile.

Kosuzu gave a careful nod of bewilderment. "Like a ouija board."

"Not quite! Um... hmm. I'm not sure how to explain it..."

"Here." Nitori reached past Sanae. She leaned over and pressed the button on the front of the television.

It turned on.

Twangy music came from the box. Onscreen, three foreigner men stood in a big rocky circle, looking at each other. One of them slowly pulled something metallic from his pocket.

"Um," Kosuzu said.

"I think that man has a gun," Akyuu said.

Kosuzu leaned in and very cautiously tapped the television screen. "There aren't little people in here or something, right...?"

"Oh, no! It's like... a painting. You don't need to worry!" Sanae said. "This all happened a long time ago. In another country, even! It's, um... it's like a play! It's all just a play."

"Oh. Okay." Kosuzu wasn't entirely reassured.

The three men on the television spread out through the rocky circle, but not much happened. The music stopped, and they all stood around looking at each other.

"This is a pretty strange play," Akyuu said.

"Yeah, it is." Nitori glanced to Sanae. "What even _is_ this? Weren't you going to leave something flashy on there to show it off?"

"It's a western! Usually those have a lot of fights and stuff! And... well, Lady Kanako has a lot of them. Lady Suwako always teases her about having a crush on this guy." Sanae tapped the screen, as the camera lingered on a man who was wearing some kind of shawl that, in Kosuzu's opinion, looked way too warm for the kind of weather he was standing in.

"His name is 'Clint Eastwood,'" Sanae explained.

Kosuzu nodded and tried to dedicate this apparently weighty fact to memory.

Onscreen, the men were still standing around doing nothing. The camera seemed very intent on pointing this fact out.

"Oh, they all have guns," Akyuu said.

"I think they're going to shoot each other?" Sanae said. "I haven't seen this one before..."

Nitori frowned impatiently. "If everybody in the outside world takes five minutes to attack somebody, they wouldn't be any match for a youkai."

"No, it's dramatic! That's the important thing! See, they're, um... they can only shoot one guy at a time, but there are three guys, so whoever shoots first is leaving himself open, I guess. It's like... it's mind games! Right. That's what it is."

"If it was a bunch of kappa, they'd just bring a gun for each hand." Nitori did not sound convinced. "Then you could shoot them both at once."

"Well, anyway...! That's not the important thing!" Sanae hit the power button on the TV again, and the image flickered out. "It would make a lot more sense if you'd seen it from the beginning. But you get the idea, right? We have a big tower on the mountain, and it's sending movi—er, plays through the air, and this box lets you watch them."

"I've never seen outside world plays before," Kosuzu said, looking at it thoughtfully. "Do they all have so many, er... mind games?"

"There's a lot of different kinds! Once the station gets going, I want to gather up a bunch of them, so I can teach Gensokyo about all the different genres and stuff! And we'll have talk shows, and weather reports, and things like that! Eventually, I mean."

" _And_ ," Nitori said, stepping forward to slide herself into the conversation again, "anybody who has one of these boxes will be able to watch it. They've got batteries in them, so they don't need power. All the plays you could want, all day every day, for the low price of a thousand yen. It's a pretty good deal, right?"

Kosuzu, who wasn't aware that Nitori had described the entire operation as 'like owning a mint' barely a few hours earlier, nodded thoughtfully. It did seem like a pretty good deal. Plays weren't common in the human village, and the few that did happen were usually during festivals. "... so, er, what does this all have to do with Suzunaan?"

"You sell tengu newspapers here, right?" Nitori leaned in, a wide grin on her face. It was never entirely reassuring to see a kappa grin. It usually meant that they were trying to take your money, getting ready to apologize for blowing up your stuff, or both at once. "I want you to start selling kappa televisions, too."


	3. Chapter 3

It took almost an hour to convince Kosuzu to sell televisions, and most of the rest of the afternoon to walk her through everything she needed to know—how to swap out the battery in a TV for a fresh one from the box they'd left with her, what she needed to tell customers, what kind of programming they hoped to show. At the end of it, she was still obviously pretty shaky with the concepts, but she seemed to have a pretty solid idea of what a movie was, so it was a start.

The walk back up Youkai Mountain was a long one, even without a load on the hand cart. Halfway to their destination, the sky started clouding up, and soon it was drizzling. By the time that Sanae and Nitori arrived back at the station, the setting sun was hidden by fog, and the human village was visible only as a circle of light on the plains below.

They rushed inside, and Nitori had barely finished parking the hand cart before she said, "So, ready to do your first broadcast?"

"My first...? We've had a bunch of movies playing all day."

"Yeah, but that was just a bunch of stuff we threw on before we left, and nobody was watching it. That kid might have sold a few TVs by now, so there could be actual customers watching! We should probably do something to show them they made a good purchase, you know?"

"Oh! Yeah, that makes sense!" Sanae paused, as a realization hit her. "What should we show, though?"

"Huh? I don't know, what do you have?"

"I just mean...! Our first official broadcast should be something really cool, right? Like, the best movie available!"

"It wouldn't hurt," Nitori said. Sanae was already dashing off into the studio.

As far as Sanae had been able to tell, the big dashboard-like desk was the heart of the studio. It had all the buttons related to the camera, and the ones that let it switch the broadcast between different sources. With the equipment she'd brought this morning, it was even more powerful. A repurposed shelf behind the desk now held the VCRs and DVD player that she'd brought, along with many, many tapes and discs holding movies themselves.

Sanae slid into place behind the desk to dig through them. "And I'll need to give an introduction, right? It wouldn't feel right to just start playing a movie out of the blue!"

"Uh, yeah, I guess so."

"And TV stations usually have call signs, and logos, and... and I should probably brush my hair before I go on camera, and...!"

Sanae looked up from the tapes, taking a moment to gather her thoughts. She was supposed to be the manager here, right? "Okay!" she announced, slapping a fist into her open palm. "It will be a lot of work, but I think we can do all of that! Do you have any drawing supplies?"

"I have paint and stuff, sure."

"That will do for now! Once you've got the camera set up, can you start on a logo for the station? It doesn't have to be anything fancy."

"A logo? Like what?"

"I don't know, a... radio tower or something? Just as long as people will know it's us when they see it! That's called 'branding'! It's like the outside world's own form of magic!"

"Uh... huh. Well, I'll see what I can do."

"And a name! We'll need a name."

"I already gave it a name! It's on the sign outside. 'Gensokyo Television Station.'"

"That's not catchy, though! It has to be something that sounds cool, like... Radio Free Gensokyo, or TV Gensokyo, or Gensokyo Box Office!"

"We're the only TV station there is. I think people will know which one they're talking about."

"Oh! I've got it! Gensokyo Channel One! That way, even if somebody else makes a TV station later, everybody will still know we were first!"

"Fine, fine. I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks!"

Sanae went back to her hunt through the shelves of tapes and DVDs. She'd grabbed almost everything she could find in the shrine, and it was a very eclectic mix. About a quarter of it was Kanako's movie collection, mostly Westerns, yakuza flicks, samurai films, and the occasional romance. Suwako hadn't contributed much to the stockpile. Most of her television viewing had been idly watching whatever Sanae was interested in as a child, and the only thing that Sanae was pretty sure was hers was a single nature documentary about frogs. Apart from these, there were a few odds and ends—a Betamax in a green sleeve that Sanae was pretty sure was the owner's guide to an ancient food processor, a recordable VHS tape with a label that said 'SANAE 1999,' and a heavily-scratched disc with no box. Sanae quietly sorted these out until she could find a trash can. Especially for the VHS tape. She was almost certain it was one of her school plays.

The rest of the movie collection was all Sanae's fault. Giant robots, magical girls, and motorcycle-riding superheroes, both on DVD and VHS. A few horror films from a phase she'd had in junior high. More sci-fi than even an oni could shake a very large stick at. A decent cross-section of older comedies and action movies.

… most of which didn't seem like it would make much sense to a Gensokyo native, at least not anybody who was watching TV for the first time in their life. But what would be the easiest for them to understand...

"How do you feel about samurai?"

"Huh?" Nitori called back. She'd stepped into the foyer at some point. "Like humans with swords?"

"Yeah, samurai! You'd understand it if I showed you a movie about them, right?"

"Sure, I guess. I don't really know human customs." Nitori leaned over to speak through the doorway. Judging by the smudges on her hands, she'd been painting. "It couldn't make any less sense than that movie about guys in silly hats shooting each other, though."

"Samurai it is!" Sanae thumbed through that particular section of the shelving. She'd never really watched most of these. Movies about angry old men killing each other for revenge had always been more Kanako's taste, not hers. For now, she picked a Zatoichi movie pretty much at random. At least she had a pretty good idea of what that was about.

"Right!" she announced, once she'd gotten the movie set up to play. "How's the sign coming?"

"I think it's done. I could have done a lot better if I'd had some time. It isn't anything fancy, but..."

There were a few thumps in the other room, then Nitori sidestepped through the door, dragging a square of metal half as big as she was. In black paint, she'd made a rather chunky-looking broadcast tower, with 'GENSOKYO CHANNEL ONE' written below it. "It isn't art, but y'know."

"I think it looks nice! Very, um, bold. … the paint's running, though."

"Dammit." Nitori tilted the sign back and blew on the paint. "This stuff takes hours to set up, so unless you want to wait until dark to start broadcasting, we're not going to be able to use it."

"I think it's fine as it is! It's like... symbolism!"

"Of _what_?"

"... I don't know. It sounds more impressive if you say it is, though! Anyway, it's nearly the top of the hour, so if we're going to broadcast, we should get started soon!"

It took a few minutes to get everything else in place—working out which buttons to push, agreeing on a plan, all the boring details. As the minute hand on the wall clock crept toward 12, Sanae fidgeted, hurriedly combing her hair out with her hands. It still felt like a bit of a mess, but outside of going home and taking a bath, there wasn't much she could do about it for now.

It just made it a bit harder to ignore what she was preparing to do. The most people Sanae had ever spoken to was a crowd of a dozen or so during one of her religious speeches in the village. Now, she was going to go on live television and address all of Gensokyo. Well, okay, only the people in Gensokyo who had TVs. It was maybe three households by this point, tops. But in _theory_ , it could have been all of Gensokyo.

Nothing to do but dive in and see how it turned out. If Sanae had been the overly cautious type, she never would have ended up in Gensokyo in the first place.

"Okay!" she said. "Here goes!"

The clock hit 7:00. Sanae mashed the button to switch the camera on, and Nitori hurried in front of it to raise the sign that she'd painted, holding it a meter or two in front of the lens with only a little wobbling. After a few seconds, she lowered it to the floor again, then stepped aside.

The camera lens stared directly at Sanae.

"Ah, um, good evening, Gensokyo!" Sanae said. "My name is Sanae Kochiya, and I'm, um, the manager of this TV station!

"Gensokyo Channel One!" She pointed at the camera. "Gensokyo's first and best television station! I mean, we're also the only one, but—anyway, we hope to bring you the finest in television viewing experiences! Oh, and Nitori's the owner. Nitori, say hi!"

Nitori gave Sanae a bewildered look from next to the camera, and didn't budge an inch. Only after Sanae gestured her closer a few times did she begrudgingly creep forward, lean in just enough to give the camera an uneasy wave, and duck away again.

"Anyway..." Sanae continued. "I'm sure we'll have a lot more exciting stuff lined up in the future! For tonight, I'm just going to play a bunch of movies. We're going to be learning how to run a TV station at the same time you learn how to watch TV! Which, er, maybe wasn't the best plan, but... a-anyway! This one is named 'Samaritan Zatoichi'! Please enjoy it!"

Sanae bowed toward the camera, and after a few seconds, remembered that she was the one in charge of actually starting the movie. Sheepishly, she turned away to fumble with the DVD player's buttons, then flicked the switch to broadcast it.

Nothing really seemed to change. But outside, Gensokyo's first official public TV broadcast was flying through the air at the speed of light.

* * *

Kenjiro Akamatsu was a normal farmer.

Being a normal farmer in Gensokyo didn't quite line up with normality anywhere else. There were the fairies, for one thing. They popped up anywhere that nature was to be found, and by definition, that included a farm. Traditional wisdom held that as fairies were manifestations of natural energy, their presence helped crops grow. Contemporary Gensokyo wisdom held that whatever benefits you got from having fairies around, they were vastly outweighed by the fact that they'd gladly eat half of your harvest and have a food fight with the leftovers. To keep fairies away from his crops, he'd posted a very convincing-looking scarecrow in the middle of his fields. When that failed, he also had a bow.

Fairies were only the start of things, though. Once or twice a year, word got around that a beast youkai had been hunting near the village. Beast youkai were another matter entirely, since an arrow to the face wouldn't do anything but give them something to use as a toothpick once they finished eating you. There were ways of dealing with youkai too, of course—amulets over the entry, sardines on the front door, omamori hanging in the house. Kenjiro didn't trust any of these. At least with a weapon, you could tell if it was working. If a protective ward failed, the first he'd know of it was when he woke up to a youkai eating his legs.

So, on his fifth year of living alone on the farm, Kenjiro had bought a dog.

He was the biggest dog that Kenjiro could find in the human village, a bushy beast that the former owner had said was part wolf. His name was Pochi. (Radish farming was not a profession that rewarded creativity and originality. Mostly, it rewarded being the kind of person who could water a hectare of radishes every day without going mad from boredom.)

Kenjiro felt safer with Pochi around. His bark was vicious, and even a lesser youkai might think twice before taking on an animal that sounded like that. Failing that, he was good at hearing things moving around outside, so he served as an early warning system.

If neither of those managed to stop a youkai, Kenjiro would just have to hope that after eating a dog that big, they wouldn't have room left to eat a human.

Tonight, Pochi was barking.

"Right, right," Kenjiro said, giving the dog's mane a reassuring pat. "Is it deer again?"

"WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!" Pochi's bark shook the house, and the petting didn't deter him in the slightest. Once he started barking, he rarely let little things like the outside world slow him down.

"Let's go take a look, then."

Kenjiro reluctantly slid from his seat, then grabbed his bow from its spot by the door. Nine times out of ten, this sort of thing was just a stray animal, but it paid to be safe. After nocking an arrow, he stepped out the door.

It was nearly dark outside, and rain was pouring down, just making it more miserable. The radish stalks cast long shadows on the ground, which would probably look creepy if he hadn't spent half of his life staring at radishes. There was nobody in sight, though.

Pochi kept barking.

"It's not the neighbor's dog again, is it? If you two have any more puppies, he's going to kill me."

Now that they were fully outside, Pochi turned and directed his barking toward the back of the house. Kenjiro sighed. "There's nothing back there," he said... but couldn't quite reassure himself of it. Grumbling, he turned the corner to check behind the house.

Somebody darted forward and pressed a crossbow tip to his chest. Several more people leapt out behind them.

They were tengu. They were the most tengu-like tengu that Kenjiro could imagine. They wore red masks with oversized noses and tokin. They had fans hanging from their belts. Three of them had feathery black wings on their backs, and another had wolf ears and a tail.

Every single one, though, had a crossbow pointed in his direction.

"A-ah," Kenjiro said, and lowered his bow. Shooting a youkai hadn't even sounded like a very good idea to begin with, and finding himself outnumbered four-to-one made it even less appealing. "Um."

"Yeah, yeah, that's right," the leader said. "Don't say a thing now, you hear? Why don't you drop that thing before somebody gets hurt?"

Kenjiro practically hurled the bow to the ground. Somehow, his rarely-used sense of curiosity pushed past his self-preservation, and he squeaked out, "Who are you?"

"We're the Tengu Anti-Human Militia," the leader said, giving him a prod in the chest with her crossbow. "We're here to teach you a lesson."

* * *

Kosuzu's bedroom was in Suzunaan's attic, a little space with low, sloped ceilings that was too small to be useful for anything else. In a few years, it was probably going to be pretty cramped for Kosuzu, let alone company. For now, Akyuu liked it. With the two of them laying on the floor, rain drumming on the roof overhead, it was pretty cozy.

They'd carried one of the televisions upstairs and set it up just in time to watch the first public broadcast. 'Public' was a relative term, in this case. Akyuu had stuck around the shop for the rest of the day to observe this experiment in mass media. Kosuzu had sold a single television, to an apprentice storyteller who'd won a bit of extra money gambling. It didn't seem like the most auspicious start, but then, the apprentices mostly lived in a dorm-like communal housing. Maybe twenty people were watching that television now.

The movie that was playing made a lot more sense than the one they'd seen this afternoon, but they still weren't quite sure what to make of it.

"This speech doesn't sound right at all," Akyuu said. "The scenario makes it seem like it's in the Edo period, but this isn't how people talked then."

"Ah, um, is that so?" Kosuzu asked.

The movie continued.

"Have you ever heard of a blind man being a swordsman?" Kosuzu asked.

"No, I haven't. It does seem pretty unlikely, doesn't it?"

"It kind of does... but that's what makes him the hero, right? He's fighting against really high odds, and still coming out on top."

"I guess that's true, at least."

Kosuzu nodded. Soon, an extended fight scene started. Akyuu was absorbed enough by it that it took a few seconds to notice that Kosuzu was twitching in place, ducking and miming attacks along with the combatants. Akyuu smirked over to her. "Enjoying yourself?"

"A-ah, um. Yeah, I am!" Kosuzu glanced away in embarrassment, laughing and rubbing at the back of her neck. "It isn't as good as a good book, but don't you think it's pretty neat? Normally, seeing something like a sword fight would be really rare and dangerous. With this, you can watch it any time you want."

"Do you plan to help promote their station, then?"

"Mmhm! I think this kind of thing will be a big hit. A lot of the villagers can't read, so even a good book can only sell to so many of them. And plays are nice, but they only happen a few times a year, and not everybody can go to them... but with something like this, pretty much anybody can watch, any time they want!"

Akyuu nodded. "I guess there's that. It has some downsides, though."

"Huh? Like what?"

"It isn't accurate, for one thing."

"What do you mean?"

Akyuu reached over and tapped the screen. "The way that they fight, for one. You can tell they're pulling their blows."

"I guess so, but... kabuki does the same thing, doesn't it? They don't actually fight, they're just acting."

"But kabuki doesn't pretend it's the real thing. This is trying really hard to look like a real fight, but it still lacks that reality."

"Is it really that big of a deal?"

"I don't think anybody but me will notice. Like you said, there aren't many people still alive who've seen actual sword fights." For a moment, Akyuu looked the slightest bit smug. "But I'm afraid that people will take the wrong impressions from it. Real battles to the death are bloody and frightening. Having battles that _look_ real but aren't might make people take actual fights lightly."

"Huh... I guess I can see that."

" _And_ ," Akyuu continued, holding up a finger, "there are plenty of interesting stories about historical sword fighters. What's the point of making up a fake one? It will only confuse people."

"I don't know if everybody else really knows as much about old swordsmen as you do..."

Akyuu sighed and spread her hands in concession. "Since it's from the outside world, I guess we can't complain. It isn't like they can ask any random youkai for firsthand information on things that happened centuries ago."

"Oh..." Kosuzu glanced back to the TV, frowning. "I guess you don't like it then, do you?"

"As the Child of Miare, I don't like the idea of letting a youkai transmit any messages she wants right to human houses, even if she's working with a human. The newspaper was bad enough, but here... they could put all kinds of pro-youkai propaganda on here and we wouldn't notice until it was too late. Even if she doesn't do anything like that, humans and youkai need to be enemies, and this might be getting a bit too familiar with them."

Kosuzu nodded glumly.

"But as myself..." Akyuu allowed herself a slight smile. "It really is pretty fun, isn't it? Honestly, these actors do a better job than any of the ones in t he village."

"Oh! Yeah, it's pretty exciting." Kosuzu breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm glad you like it. If somebody like you told us to stop selling them, we wouldn't have much of a choice..."

"My job is to observe and advise, not tell people what to do. And I still think we need to keep an eye on it. But... yes, I like it." Akyuu shot Kosuzu a slight smile, then turned back to the TV, crossing her arms and resting her chin on them. "Now, please be quiet. I want to see how this fight ends."

* * *

There was a story passed down in Kenjiro's family, about his great-great-grandfather who had gotten kidnapped for a weekend of drinking with tengu.

The story had undoubtedly mutated over generations of retellings, but some important details remained. The tengu had drank with him for a day and a half straight, and after he had passed out, he'd woken up in his own bed the next morning, with a small chest of treasure to repay him for the inconvenience. The tengu had been dignified, he had said. Powerful. Warlike.

These tengu did not put Kenjiro in mind of that story.

They were short, for one thing. The one that was keeping a crossbow held to Kenjiro's face had to hold it at a sharp angle to do so, and the few times she'd given him warning prods with it, she'd needed to stand on her tiptoes to reach. She had a portable radio in her hand, and was carrying out the occasional angry conversation with somebody on the other end. The rest of the tengu were digging through Kenjiro's sparse belongings. Most of it ended up tossed aside onto the floor. Whenever one found something that looked valuable, they took it to the tengu who seemed to be the leader of the whole operation, and she appraised it, before tossing it aside or pocketing it.

One of the tengu was petting Pochi. She had a metal hand, which was pretty weird too. Pochi seemed to be enjoying it. The traitor.

"Seven thousand yen, a bow, a compass, and a knife," the lead tengu said, listing off what items she'd decided to keep so far. "The farming lifestyle really ain't exactly glamorous, is it?"

Kenjiro stayed quiet. She wasn't wrong, but it didn't feel like anything he could say would improve the situation. Plus, he had a tub of umeshu that had been brewing behind the house for a year now, and it was probably worth more than everything except the currency combined.

"Seems to me," the tengu said, stepping closer, "that it's barely even worth the trouble for us to rob you. A big old waste of our time. What do you think of that?"

"I'm... I'm sorry?" he said, for a lack of any better answer.

"Yeah, that's right. So, here's how it's going to be..." The tengu leaned in, although she had to rise up on her tiptoes to do so. "Me and my friends here, we're old and wise even by tengu standards, but we don't like humans that much. Isn't that right?"

"Yeah!" a halfhearted chorus came from the other tengu. The one petting Pochi was distracted enough that her reply came a second or two later.

"But we're kind and gentle souls when you get down to it. So, I'm gonna give you a choice, and I want you to think real careful on it, okay?"

Kenjiro slowly nodded. She did not make the prospect of having a choice in this matter sound appealing.

"Your first option is, well, me and my friends don't want you doing anything naughty like following us back to our camp. So, I could just shoot one of your legs so you can't go nowhere for a while."

She paused to let that sink in before continuing.

"Your other option is, we'll be real nice and not shoot you..." She gave his leg a reassuring pat. "And you promise us you'll stay put. Think you can do that?"

Kenjiro nodded so quickly that he was afraid his head might fall off.

"Good. Smart kid."

"It's no use, boss," one of the tengu called from the next room over. "This guy doesn't have anything worth stealing."

"Eh. It figures."

"Can we take the dog?"

It was the tengu who'd been petting Pochi the entire time. The question was blurted out, and even behind the mask, she looked like she regretted it.

The lead tengu turned to look at Pochi. "... the dog?"

"He's a really nice dog...! And there's lots of room for him in the base, and...!" She hesitated and glanced uncertainly between Kenjiro and the leader. When she spoke again, she sounded a little more decisive. "I mean. A dog like this is obviously a guard dog. It could, um, aid greatly in our efforts to fight the hated humans. Ma'am."

"We're not taking the damn—"

The lead tengu went quiet, as a squawk of static came from her radio. "It's been ten minutes," the girl on the other end said. "Are you guys done? It would really be better if you move fast before more humans show up."

"Somehow I don't remember putting you in charge," the leader snapped into the radio.

"It's not an order, it's a suggestion."

"Then your _valuable suggestion_ has been noted." The tengu turned the radio off, grumbling under her breath, and raised her voice. "Listen up! We need to head out before more humans show up. Grab anything that looks valuable and get ready to move."

"Does that include the dog?" asked the tengu who was still petting Pochi.

The leader grumbled at this, then sighed. "I suppose. A fine canine like this is too valuable to leave in the hands of a human." She walked over and gave Pochi a pat on the ear. Carefully, like somebody who had learned about the concept of petting dogs in a book. "We might as well keep him."

"You can't just...!"

Kenjiro had blurted the half-sentence out and stepped forward before he realized that this was a very big mistake.

"Can't just what?" the lead tengu said, turning to level her crossbow at him. Even past the mask, he could see that she was grinning.

"Nothing," he whimpered. "Please, take him." It wasn't like he was much of a guard dog anyway. Apparently.

"That's what I thought."

The lead tengu turned to look over the house again. What belongings they hadn't taken—Kenjiro's food and clothes and farming tools—were ankle-deep across the floor. She nodded in satisfaction. "Time to move out, girls. Why don't we let this _nice man_ get back to his evening, eh?"

The announcement got a quick reaction out of them. The tengu dropped what they were doing, and followed her out of the house. Kenjiro could only watch as his life savings and guard dog walked out the door.

He wasn't sure which was worse. At least his money didn't have a tail to wag as it betrayed him.

* * *

The 'tengu' waited until they were back to the treeline to relax.

"Did he follow us?"

"Don't think so, boss."

"Good. Outfits off. Hurry up."

There was a rustling of clothes as they all tugged off their masks and tokin, then squirmed out of their fake wings, wolf ears, and tails.

"Are you out? That was kind of long for a simple robbery." Maeri's voice came over the radio, and she barely got to finish the sentence before Touko shouted back at her.

"We'll take however long we need to take!"

"I'm just saying, if you wait too long, other humans might show up. They visit each other sometimes, you know."

"Then it's a good thing we left when we did, now isn't it? If you've got something important to tell us, speak up, but I don't take orders from you. Got it?"

"Right, right. Sure thing, boss." A click came over the radio as Maeri switched her end off.

"And you." Touko whirled on Rumi. "Just what made you think that we needed a dog?!"

"I'm sorry...! He's just a really nice dog, and, um...!"

"It's not _about_ the dog, it's about you doing that in front of a human. We're supposed to look like tengu!" Touko slapped a hand into her palm emphatically. "Vicious warriors! Fearsome! Wise! Vicious warriors don't call stuff _cute_!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Rumi stumbled backward, raising her hands apologetically. "I'm still, um, learning how to do criminal things! I'll do better next time!"

"I'd sure hope you would."

"'s a pretty cute dog," Orisa murmured, just quietly enough to not attract attention.

"Do you want me to take the dog back...?" Rumi asked.

"Oh, yeah, great idea. 'I'm sorry, mister human, I didn't mean to take your dog after all, please forgive me for the inconvenience.' That'll sure put some fear into him, won't it?"

"It was just a thought..."

"Then maybe you oughta leave the thinking to somebody else next time."

Rumi didn't have a response for that. Touko held her gaze for a moment and straightened up with a satisfied nod. "Good," she said. "Now let's get movin'. And keep that mutt quiet or I'll find some way to quiet him down myself."

"Right..." Rumi gave the dog another pat before the group of kappa followed Touko down a path to the riverside.

* * *

"So, that last movie was called 'Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack'! It makes a bit more sense if you've seen the show leading up to it, I promise. I have it here, but it's a bit too long for the night, so maybe next time! It's... getting pretty late, though, so I think we should probably wrap things up for now. There will probably be more tomorrow, though! Um, for now...!"

Nitori had been dozing off in her seat, but now noticed that Sanae was looking her way and gesturing for her. Following her frantic hand signals, she grabbed the sign board and shoved it back in front of the camera.

Sanae continued. "This is Gensokyo Channel One, signing off! Have a good night, Gensokyo!"

She hurried to turn off the camera feed, and it was done. The TV on the wall that had been displaying the station's broadcast went dark. Sanae gave a sigh of relief and slumped back into her chair. "Making TV is a lot of work..."

"Yeah, well, you can't give up yet. It's only our first night." Nitori rested the sign against a wall and turned back to her. "That was probably more than we needed to do, anyway. It's almost midnight. There probably aren't many humans awake at this hour."

"I guess so. But still! I wanted the first broadcast to be, um, an experience! You know?"

"It was definitely something different."

Nitori settled into her own chair, and for the first time in hours, the studio was silent apart from the sound of rain on the roof. Sanae yawned and stretched out in her own seat. "The bad part of finishing this late is that now I've got to fly home in the rain..."

"Uh-huh! It should be pretty n—oh, right. Humans don't like getting wet, do they?"

"Not really! It sounds like it's pouring out there."

Nitori nodded, and the silence returned. There were options here, she knew. They just weren't options that she _liked_.

"Well, uh... if you want. If it'd be convenient, I mean. I've been sleeping in the maintenance room the past few nights while I fixed the place up. There's probably enough room for two people, if you'd rather stay here tonight."

"Oh! That sounds nice. Are you sure it's okay, though?"

Nitori glanced aside. She actually wasn't sure if she was okay with that, but it was too late to back out now. "A-ah, sure! Why wouldn't it be? I own the place, and you're the manager now, aren't you?"

Nitori slid out of her chair and led the way to the back of the room, there, in the middle of a brick wall slathered in paint the color of dirty dishwater, was a single door labeled 'MAINTENANCE.'

The room inside, Nitori was pretty sure, had barely been touched for years before the station was abandoned. It had taken her most of a day just to clean it out, and another day to get the power hooked up and working. There was a mess of squat mechanical boxes toward the back of the room—she knew that one was a transformer, another had so many wires leading to it that she was afraid she'd break half the station if she messed with it, and another seemed to be the fuse box for the tower itself. Most of the room was occupied by gangly industrial shelves, holding all the spare parts and other equipment that the station needed. Thankfully, those had been well-stocked.

And in the middle, Nitori had made her home away from home.

She'd never _meant_ to build up a residence here. It was just that, every time she'd made a supply run, she'd brought back a few more amenities that sounded nice. Over time, they'd conglomerated into some kind of hybrid bedroom/workshop. In the middle was a bare mattress covered in a tangle of blankets and pillows, and scattered around it was all the detritus of Nitori's daily life—a toolbox, half a dozen gadgets that she'd been tinkering with in the evenings to wind down before bed, a multimeter, a homemade electric kettle, and a battered tin of coffee.

It was, frankly, an embarrassment. Nitori hurried in and nudged some of the mess out of the way with her foot, clearing a path from the door. "Ah, jeez, sorry it's a mess. I, uh, haven't cleaned back here in a while, I guess!" She'd just cleaned the room the day before.

Sanae didn't seem to mind, though. "Oh!" she said, her eyes settling onto something in the pile. "Is that the newest tengu manga?!"

"Huh? A-ah, that thing over there? Well, I guess it might be, huh..."

Sanae was already charging forward. She flopped onto her belly on the mattress, and reached out to grab it for inspection. In the cardboard case, there were forty slim volumes, all neatly stacked together. Sanae pulled one out and looked over the cover. " _Tailless Urashima_ ," she read uncertainly.

"Right, yeah, uh, you see, I just found that down by the river, and I thought it'd be a waste to just leave it there, so..."

Sanae had already started flipping through it, but now looked up. "Oh, you don't read them...?"

"Ah, you know," Nitori said with an anxious laugh, "kappa aren't like humans. We don't have time to waste on things like that."

"Oh... well, I heard that this one's really interesting, though. The hero learns how to go into people's dreams, but then it turns out that he's been trapped in his own dreams all along, so most of it is about him trying to find a way back to—"

"Eh? No, that's _Storm Synapse_ ," Nitori blurted out without thinking, then froze.

Sanae looked up, realization dawning on her face for a moment. Then, grinning, she thrust the rolled-up comic at Nitori. "So you _do_ read them!"

Nitori sighed. She glanced aside, rubbing at the back of her neck. "I... yeah, now and then. Just don't tell anybody, okay? Kappa don't do things for _fun_. If people knew I read that stuff, they'd think, er..." She floundered for words, trying to think of something marginally more polite than, _They'd think I'd picked up too many weird habits from humans._

"They'd think you were lazy?"

"Right! Something like that." It basically meant the same thing, as far as Nitori was concerned.

"Huh... that seems mean. Reading things is pretty fun. So, um, if this isn't the one about the guy getting trapped in dreams, what is it?"

"Oh, that one?" Nitori plopped down on the mattress across from Sanae. "There's this human hero who gets sent out to exterminate a village of these snake youkai, but once he's halfway done, he learns that he's actually a wolf tengu, only humans kidnapped him when he was a baby, and they chopped off his ears and tail so he'd never know. And then he, you know, has to decide who to side with and all that."

Sanae frowned uncertainly down at the book. "... does he end up killing a bunch of humans?"

"Ah, well, it's written for youkai, you know!" Seeing Sanae's frown only deepen, Nitori hurriedly added, "Not that I like that kind of thing! I only read it for the art."

"Oh... right. Well, apart from that, it sounds pretty interesting. Do you mind if I read it while I'm here? We only visit the tengu village a few times a year, so it's rare for me to get to read new stuff right when it comes out."

"Well, I guess so, but—"

But Sanae's mind had already ricocheted off on a new tangent, like a hyperactive pinball. "Oh! What's this?"

After following her gaze to her target, Nitori lunged forward to snatch it up. "Ah, it's nothing, just...!"

Sanae got to it first. She picked it up, turning it over in her hands. It looked like a small pistol, with its frame entirely covered in electronics. "Is it a weapon?"

"Eh, well, kind of..."

Sanae stopped inspecting it and carefully pointed the thing away from the two of them. "What does it do...?"

Nitori glared at the device for a few seconds, trying to think of an honest answer that wouldn't embarrass her. Nothing was occurring to her, though. Begrudgingly, she grabbed the pistol from Sanae, then pointed it at her chest. Sanae's eyes widened in shock, Nitori pulled the trigger...

And a glowing violet dot appeared on Sanae's shirt.

"It was supposed to be a laser weapon," Nitori confessed. "But I haven't been able to find anything good for the gain medium, so that's as strong as it gets."

"Oh, neat! They actually have devices like this in the outside world, you know. They call them 'laser pointers.' Yours looks a lot cooler, though."

"You... _like_ it?"

"Yeah! It looks like you're holding a ray gun. Even if you're just using it to point at things, that still makes it more fun. All of this stuff looks pretty neat, really." Sanae moved on to the next gadget in line, holding it up for show. "How about this one?"

Nitori hesitated for a moment. Normally, she was embarrassed to let anybody see her failed inventions... but, Sanae had already proven that she didn't have a cruel bone in her body. A few more couldn't hurt. "Eh, that one, that was supposed to be a trellis for growing cucumbers, but I couldn't get the arms to work right."

"Why does a cucumber trellis need arms...?"

"See, _that_ is kind of a long story..."

Nitori laid down on the blankets across from Sanae, and the two settled in, the rain still beating on the roof overhead.


	4. Chapter 4

Hina didn't come into the human village very often.

Most humans weren't very knowledgeable about Gensokyo's inhuman residents. Youkai and spirits who made it into the newspapers a few times, or who caused incidents, those might eventually work their way into general knowledge. Others would get cautious glances if they walked around openly, but as long as they minded their own business, they would be left in peace.

Hina didn't fall into either of those categories.

The humans probably thought that she couldn't hear them. At least, she liked to think so. She'd made a bit of a game out of categorizing people's reactions to her.

"Don't look that way," a mother muttered to her children, tugging them toward the edge of the street. More quietly, she added, "Do you know who that is?"

Hina rounded a corner. In front of her, a shop's door slammed closed. A group of pedestrians hurried over to the other side of the street, keeping their eyes carefully averted from her. An old man sitting on a front step stood his ground, but as soon as Hina was past him, he started mumbling a prayer to Amitabha.

She was used to it by now. She liked to think that she had pretty good control over the misfortune that saturated the air around her, but accidents did happen. They tended to be the kind of accidents that humans didn't forget easily. She did her best to put them at ease, walking with her eyes lowered and paying no particular attention to any one person, like she was walking in her own little world. It didn't help _much_ , but it helped.

Mostly, she just tried to get her business over with quickly so she could go home. First stop was the market, to buy the few food items she couldn't grow herself or trade for with the Akis. Next was the potter, to buy replacements for a few cups that had cracked over the years. Then, the tailor, to get the supplies she needed to mend her clothes over the next few months.

That finished up the actual business she had today. But, she still had one more stop to make. At the end of a long row of storefronts, she turned and walked through the front curtain of an udon shop.

It was a routine she'd picked up somewhere over the years, and it was one that had stuck. The shop wasn't much to look at—there was a much nicer one down the road, and the shopkeeper was a sweaty, greasy-mustached man who charged too much for everything. The food was good, though, and more importantly, he'd always treated her like every other customer. In his case, that meant that he barely grumbled more than a few words to her and mostly tried to pretend that she didn't exist once she'd paid, but that was something Hina didn't get to experience often. Combined with eating a meal that she hadn't cooked herself, and it was an experience she was willing to pay for.

Today, the shop was a lot more crowded than usual, with five or six customers clustered around the counter near the door. She silently stepped past them and made her way down the row of stools, settling down at the far end.

None of them even noticed her presence. After sitting in silence for a few seconds, she subtly glanced in their direction. The other customers were all leaning over the counter, fighting for space to see something on top of it, but she couldn't get a good look at it past the forest of heads. She could hear low noise, though, like distant conversation.

"Oh, it's you," the shopkeeper grumbled, leaning against the counter across from her. "What'll it be?"

"I'll have the curry udon, please." Hina knew the menu by heart by this point.

The shopkeeper snatched up her payment with a grunt of acknowledgment and turned to head toward the kitchen, but before he could leave, Hina raised her voice again. "If I might ask... what's so interesting over there?"

He grudgingly followed her gaze toward the crowd, then turned back toward the kitchen. "One of those new talking boxes. Thought it'd bring in more customers."

Hina nodded along with the explanation. She didn't understand a word of it, but she felt obligated to keep up her end of the conversation. "It looks like it's working pretty well."

"Not hardly. Not a single one of the cheap bastards has ordered anything." With a final grumble, he continued toward the kitchen and disappeared through the door.

Hina waited patiently with her hands folded in her lap, but her attention kept getting drawn back toward the group. Whatever they were looking at, it seemed so interesting that they hadn't even noticed her presence yet. And she'd never seen a talking box before... After a few minutes of deliberation, she rose to her feet and walked cautiously toward the other customers.

"The boss will have your head for this for sure," a tinny voice said from the center of the group.

Hina edged up against them and rose on her tiptoes to see past the wall of shoulders.

The sound had come from a box, alright. A metal box, with a glass screen on the front. Onscreen, two men were standing in an alley, in a distinctly outside world-looking sort of city. The men looked like outsiders too, with slicked-back hair, sunglasses, and flashy jackets. One had an item pointed at another that Hina vaguely recognized as a gun.

Hina watched for a few seconds, her eyes slowly widening in amazement. The man who was being held at gunpoint babbled out apologies and excuses, in a rough accent that Hina could barely follow. "Wow..." she said. "How did they fit such little actors into a box?"

"It's not little men," one of the other spectators said, with a ton of smug superiority. "This is happenin' somewhere else. We can just see it here, 'cuz of technology."

"Technology..." Hina repeated, rapt. "So this lets you see people without getting close to them...?"

"Think that's basically how it works," another man mumbled, not tearing his eyes away for a moment.

The implications slowly dawned on Hina over a few more seconds. She stood rooted in the place, a wide smile growing on her face. "Where... do these boxes come from? Can anybody get one?"

"Heard it's that creepy bookshop at the edge of town. Wouldn't set foot in the place, myself, but—"

The man was cut off by the sound of Hina's hurried footsteps headed toward the door.

* * *

Nitori had taken six televisions down to Suzunaan on the first visit.

When she'd returned the next day, four of them had sold, and she'd delivered eleven more.

The day after, every television had been sold, and she'd delivered thirteen more.

Those all sold out too, and she'd dropped fifteen more off the next day.

Nitori was no mathematician, but she knew a pattern when she saw it. She'd been up for half the night making televisions, and eleven of them already sat neatly lined up next to her. She wanted to make nine more before she headed down to Suzunaan, and she was half-afraid that it still wouldn't be enough. At this rate, she'd need to be making televisions every waking moment just to keep up with demand. At least the batteries were easy to mass-produce, or she'd have to hire on assistants. Nothing irked a kappa more than admitting that they needed help building something.

Success had its downsides, but when success sold for a thousand yen a unit, she really couldn't complain.

"Good morning!"

The front door of the station flew open, and Sanae burst in, her voice echoing off the walls. Nitori wasn't sure how she managed it. Her dealings with humans led her to keep a far earlier schedule than most kappa, and she'd seen enough to know that most humans took a while to get going in the morning.

But not Sanae. They'd been running the station together for four days now, and she'd picked up on that much. If there was work to be done, Sanae dove in without complaint. If there was something fun to do, her enthusiasm could be almost intimidating. Nitori was halfway convinced that if you dissected the girl, you'd find the secrets of perpetual motion hidden in her guts.

Not that she wanted to. The enthusiasm was... well, she didn't want to call it endearing, but it was a good trait in a business partner, if nothing else.

"Good morning," Nitori said, without looking up from the workbench she'd set up in the studio. "What's on the schedule for today?"

"I'm glad you asked! I've been thinking about it, and..."

Sanae moved closer, and only then did Nitori notice that she was carrying a chalkboard, almost as wide as she was tall. Carefully, Sanae sat it on top of one of the shorter electronics cabinets and propped it against the wall.

On the chalkboard were seven horizontal bars, labeled 'Monday' through 'Sunday.' Along the top, they were divided into times, from 9 AM to 9 PM.

Most of the bars were divided into large blocks. Action Movies, Comedy Movies, Tokusatsu, Gundam, Super Robot Series...

"Oh. An actual schedule?"

"Right! Now that we've been running for a while, I thought we should get a bit more... um, rigorous, you know? If we just show everything at random, people won't know when anything is on."

"Uh. Do we really need these two categories?" Nitori asked, pointing between the last two. "Aren't those gundam things already robots?"

"Huh? Oh, no! They're really different categories! Gundams are mostly real robot types, but Super Robot series are completely different! A lot of them can transform, or don't really follow the laws of physics. I mean, some people say that gundams don't either, but there are some pretty good studies that—"

"R-right, right, I think I get it." She totally didn't, but Nitori had pretty quickly learned when to spot the signs that Sanae was about to launch on a half-hour lecture. In its own way, it was cute. It was rare to find humans who cared about the important things, like accurate use of technical terminology.

"Anyway, I'm pretty happy with this. It gives us a nice rotation. Well, except..."

Sanae glanced back to the chalkboard, and Nitori followed her gaze. "Except what?"

"Well, um. I bought every DVD that was for sale at Kourindou, and there's the stuff Sumireko was able to import for us... but even then, we only have about two hundred hours of footage. If we broadcast twelve hours a day, we can barely go for two weeks before we start repeating shows."

"Well, nobody said we had to be on the air for twelve hours a day."

"Right, but it would be bad if we went for less time, don't you think? In the outside world, a lot of people watch TV while they're getting ready in the morning, then again at night when they get home. If we move the start or end times too far, we'll miss one of those. It's, um, marketing! Or something."

"Eh, I guess. Anyway, people won't notice if we repeat stuff a few times. It's not like anybody is watching all day every day."

"But! That's just in general. When you get into individual categories..." Sanae tapped one of the blocks on the chalkboard. "Like! We only have nine comedy movies, so if I show one every day, we'll be repeating them by this time next week! With horror movies, it's even worse, so I can only show two of them a week if we don't want to run out within a month."

"So we've got to get more, is what you're saying."

"Right! Except..." Sanae glanced over the chart again, the sighed and slumped. "If we're buying stuff from the outside world, it's pretty expensive. Even if we set aside a lot of our money for it, Sumireko might not be able to import them fast enough, and that's only if she keeps helping us..."

"I see what you're getting at." Nitori finally turned away from her workbench, pushing a finished TV away from her and wiping her hands on a cloth. "Well, I don't think you're going to find many more of them around Gensokyo. Outside world goods are kind of a rarity, you know? We might be able to pick up a few more at a kappa bazaar sometime, but they wouldn't be cheap."

"Yeah, I know. I'm not sure what else we could do, though. Maybe take out a loan from somebody and have Sumireko buy a whole lot of movies at once, but I'm not sure how many she can carry at a time, and that would only put it off for a while..."

Nitori considered that.

They could definitely _afford_ it, as much money as they were making off the TVs. And apart from buying movies, the station's operating costs were practically nonexistent so far, so it seemed fairly safe. It just chafed at Nitori's natural instincts to never end up on the unprofitable end of a transaction.

"Maybe," she conceded with a sigh. "But only if we can find one with good terms. And I'd still—"

Nitori was cut off by a voice from the outside door. "Heeeey! Anybody here? I need to talk business."

They glanced to each other uncertainly. Sanae made the first move. "Sure, one second!" she called back, and headed across the lobby to open the door.

Standing on the other side was a tengu. A tengu who Nitori's mind, after several seconds, dimly placed as Hatate Himekaidou. The wait had only been a few seconds, but by the time the door opened, she was already leaning against the frame, holding her camera in one hand and idly poking at the buttons with a thumb. "Took you long enough," she said, without looking up.

"Oh, sorry," Sanae said, glancing from Hatate to the camera and back again. "We don't get many visitors! Can I help you?"

"Something like that." Hatate flipped her camera shut and leveled it at Sanae. "This is that TV thing, right?"

"The Gensokyo Channel One television station, yep!"

Hatate nodded knowingly. "See, we've been keeping an eye on this place. The great tengu have been freaking out about it all week."

"They have...?"

"Yep." Hatate pushed herself off the doorframe with a smirk. "I mean, this kinda stuff attracts attention! And here's the thing... you're sending, like, twelve hours of messages out across Gensokyo every day, right?"

"Right..."

"That's a lotta information. Two or three newspapers a day. That kind of thing makes the great tengu worried."

"Hey, listen, lady, I've heard this kind of thing before." Nitori tossed the now grease-covered cloth aside and stepped closer, patting her skirt and trying to remember where she'd hidden her various sidearms. "If this is some kind of protection racket deal, you can forget it."

"Huh? I didn't say anything like that! Jeez, that's kappa for ya, always jumping to conclusions." Hatate shook her head and shot Sanae a glance that suggested she was supposed to sympathize. "Calm down, I'm just here to make you an offer."

"Whatever. Make it quick. Sanae and I have a business to run, you know."

Hatate smirked, and seemed to take pleasure in waiting as long as she could before making her proposal. "You're selling those tele-thingies to youkai, right?"

"... we are?" Sanae said, glancing between the other two in surprise.

"Lots of youkai have those things. Do you think humans are the only ones who know about that bookstore or something? So, anyway, here's the deal. Nobody actually cares about you showing dumb human stuff to people, so you can stop worrying about _that_. But, we want you to, like, do a news thing, you know? Once a day, I'll write up all the latest news, and you'll send it out everywhere. In exchange, we'll let you guys sell those gadgets in the tengu village. You know, to expand your market or whatever."

"A news show...?" Sanae paused, an uncertain smile growing on her face. "That would help with the scheduling stuff! There's always fresh news to talk about!"

" _Tengu_ news," Nitori said. "Half of it's lies and propaganda."

"Huh? I think you're thinking of the wrong paper, y'know." Hatate huffed and stepped inside, tucking her camera away so she could cross her arms and frown down at Nitori. " _That_ rag is the Bunbunmaru _. I_ write the Kakashi Spirit News. Stories based on, ya know, actual facts and stuff."

"Oh, yeah, that one. The one that only puts out a new edition like three times a year."

"Hey, news reporting's hard work."

"It does sound pretty hard..." Sanae agreed. "... but if you can barely fill a paper in a few months, won't it be kind of hard to do the news live every day?"

"... eh?" Hatate stared blankly into the air. She apparently hadn't thought of that. "A-ah, well, yeah, I guess that might be kinda hard. But that's for me to worry about, not you! I'm a professional news reporter and junk! Don't underestimate me!"

"Right..." Sanae glanced back to Nitori. "Can we have a few minutes to make a decision?"

"Sure, whatever." Hatate had already pulled her camera out again and resumed leafing through images. "Take your time."

Sanae barely gave the studio door time to shut behind them before she leaned in excitedly. "This is just what we needed, right?! If we have a news show, that helps fill up our schedule, and selling to the tengu gives us more money to work with!"

"Eh, maybe. Do we really need the extra business, though? So far, the village is buying TVs faster than I can make them."

"But they'll eventually slow down, right? Sooner or later, everybody who wants a TV will have one. Plus, if we can get the tengu interested, maybe more youkai will want to buy them, too!"

Nitori made a big show of considering it. She sighed, and pouted thoughtfully, and scuffed her feet against the floor. It was hard to come up with a reason that seemed compelling enough to even bring up, though. Sanae was just like that. Whatever she said, it sounded like the most obvious choice in the world. Charisma or something. The only natural human ability that was any good against youkai. "I still don't like working with tengu," she said. "I don't know if you've hung out with them, but they can be kind of pushy. What do you want to bet that if we reject her 'offer,' she'll be back in a week with another one that's less generous?"

"But it's a pretty good offer, right?"

"Yeah..." Nitori sighed. "We can give it a shot. But the second she starts sticking her nose in where it doesn't belong, she's out of here."

"Great! And then if we let other youkai make shows...!"

"Eh? Other youkai?"

"Right! A lot of them are old and have a lot of stories, and there are youkai musicians and, um, dancers and stuff! I bet we could find a lot of them who want to make their own shows, too!"

Nitori glanced over her shoulder, where the camera lay dormant atop its tripod. "Do you really think youkai would be interested in something like—"

She stopped herself mid-sentence. Of _course_ they would. There practically wasn't a youkai alive that wouldn't take an opportunity to make themselves the center of attention. Putting them on screens across all of Gensokyo... yeah. Somebody would definitely be interested. She was kind of jealous she hadn't thought of the idea first. "... Never mind, I see your point."

"Ah! Thanks! This is going to be great, I promise!"

" _But_." Nitori held up a warning finger. "We can't just give it to any youkai, right? It would have to be ones that are going to make, uh, quality content."

"Mmhm!"

"... and I guess we'd have to pay them, huh?"

"Hmm… yeah, we probably should. Maybe a thousand yen per hour of usable footage?"

"Five hundred."

"Seven fifty?"

Nitori held her gaze for a few seconds before capitulating. "Fine, fine," she sighed. "But only if it's usable. We can't afford to pay every idiot who can talk in front of a camera."

Sanae made a little overjoyed humming sound deep in her throat, which built up into a squeak of excitement. "Great! I'll start getting Hatate settled in!"

* * *

Over the few days that she'd lived in her little room in Touko's hideout, Rumi had slowly transformed it into her own. Most of it was taken up by odds and ends from their raids on the humans—a small pile of assorted tools and minor treasures, three bottles of sake, a plate she'd thought looked particularly fancy, a sword, and one Jizo statue they'd picked up from the roadside for the heck of it. She'd draped her tengu disguise over the latter, giving the bodhisattva a scowling red face.

Along one wall, closest to the entrance, was the massive workbench that Touko had furnished for her. It had started out pretty empty, but now, after days of working, it was a glorious mess, with burn marks and screws and tools littering the surface. The other end of the room was entirely enveloped by a nest-like pile of stolen clothing that she'd been using as a bed.

At the moment, she was sitting in the middle of it, and the dog was flopped down next to her, threatening to shove her to the floor if he rolled over again. Touko's main stipulation for letting her keep the dog was that Rumi would be the one to take care of it, so his food and water bowls were sitting nearby, too. At the moment, there was a mostly-dead fish carefully laid across the food bowl. Rumi had no idea what dogs ate, but over the course of the last few nights, she'd ruled out rice, peppermints, radishes, and most other foods that she had a ready supply of. Only fish seemed to spark much interest from him.

The smell wasn't the best, but Rumi was too deep in concentration to pay it much attention. Her focus was entirely on the notebook in her lap.

There was a long column of figures running down the middle of the page. She'd meticulously inventoried everything that she'd managed to steal so far, then done her best to figure out how much she could sell them for. The sword was probably worth a lot. The sake and the statue might be worth a bit. Most of the rest... not so much. There were a few larger numbers toward the end, and then line after line of paltry figures—two hundred yen, a hundred yen, a hundred forty yen, fifty yen...

And at the bottom, was her grand total. She'd checked the figures a few times, her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth in concentration, but still the treacherous numbers agreed: she'd made six thousand, two hundred, eighty yen. It was pretty good for four nights of work. It wasn't enough.

There were kappa who were banished for good, like Maeri and Ririsa. Others were a little more lucky, if you could think of it that way. Her teleporter mishap hadn't just cost her an arm. It had also flooded an entire wing of the kappa hideout. Kappa tech was waterproof, but it wasn't _crush_ proof, and the flood had toppled experiments, splintered doors, scattered wardrobes, and flushed a very irate salmon into the communal glassware cabinet. Nobody had really bothered to give her an invoice before they expelled her, but she'd heard rumors that the damages were about fifty thousand yen.

At this rate, it would take her weeks to earn that much. With a sigh, Rumi flopped back against the dog, then fished in a pocket and popped another peppermint into her mouth. She couldn't be too upset, anyway. This was the first time in months that she'd slept under a _real_ roof, the kind that didn't dribble water on her face when it rained too hard or the wind came from the wrong direction. The pile of tools and material Touko had provided had given her enough to experiment to her heart's content, and she even sometimes got to eat food that she hadn't just stabbed herself four minutes earlier.

"HEY!" Touko's voice echoed through the cave network. "GONNA BE HEADIN' OUT TO ROB ANOTHER HOUSE IN ONE HOUR, AND ANYONE WHO ISN'T IN THE FRONT ROOM AND READY IS GONNA BE TARGET PRACTICE!"

… okay, so, the banditry wasn't so great. But, in the words of a traditional kappa aphorism, if you laid a few eggs, somebody was bound to try making an omelet. You had to take the bad with the good.

Rumi sighed and looked back to her notebook. If she hurried up, she'd have time to double-check all the numbers before they left.

* * *

Hatate glanced down at the paper in front of her, shifting uneasily in her seat. "I really have to read all this junk?"

"It's only a few lines!" Sanae said. "Just this once, okay? It will be a big help."

Hatate frowned, drumming her fingers on the desk.

They were in the broadcasting studio, and over the past few days, Sanae had _tried_ making it look like what she imagined a TV studio should. Nitori's drippily-painted station logo was hanging on the back wall, and she'd put away all the extra supplies and tools that had been laying around. She was pretty proud of the end result. The place still look outdated and ancient to her eyes, but in a good way. It looked like a lab out of some old sci-fi movie.

And right now, Hatate was sitting at the news desk, with Sanae leveling the camera at her as she awaited her decision.

"Alright," Hatate conceded with a sigh. "Can't hurt to give it a shot."

"Great!" Sanae flipped a switch on the camera, then hovered her thumb expectantly over the RECORD button. She hadn't found many excuses to use it, but she'd still fiddled with the device enough to learn how to record things, rather than broadcast them live. It was bound to come in handy sooner or later. "Whenever you're ready, then?"

"Right..." Hatate did not sound confident. "Here goes, I guess."

Hatate took a deep breath to prepare herself, and Sanae hit RECORD. Hatate held a paper up in her hand and read from it.

"Um, h-hello, Gensokyo! I'm Hatate Himekaidou, and I am a normal tengu. But now, thanks to the, uh, new, uh, Gensokyo Channel One... programming partnership... thing... I have my own news show, which will be broadcast to possibly hundreds of humans.

"A-and the best part is..." Hatate had been staring right at the script, but now glanced up. Seeing the camera again, she hurriedly looked away and shrank down in her seat, like she was trying to hide from it. "I get paid to do it. So if you have, uh... if you have... ideas for a television program and would like..."

Hatate trailed off, mumbling the words under her breath. Sanae frantically gestured for her to speak up.

Hatate's voice spiked back up to its normal volume. "... please come to the Gensokyo Channel One main office on Youkai mountain during... during morning hours, and maybe... wecanhelpyourdreamcometrue."

Hatate blurted out the last few words in one go, then slumped back in the chair, letting out a sigh of relief. She glared at the camera. "Is that it?"

"That was... definitely something," Sanae agreed, as positively as she could. "I was thinking that maybe you could try again and this time do it a bit more, um... confidently?"

"Like what?"

"Like, usually, when people read things on TV, they're really..." Sanae ducked out from behind the camera and took a moment to steady herself, calling upon the spirit of every television reporter she'd ever watched back home. "'Good evening! I'm Sanae Kochiya, with Gensokyo Channel One news, live from our studio on Youkai Mountain! Today's top story is, um…' Well, you know. Like that."

Hatate gave her a blank stare.

"Go on, try it!"

"Why would you even say all of that? If they're watching, they already know it's the news, right?"

"Well, um, maybe. But it's… tradition, kind of! Like having a big headline on the front of a newspaper."

Hatate did not look convinced. Sanae stepped back behind the camera and zoomed in on her face. "Go on, try it!"

Hatate looked balefully to the camera, then sighed. "Hey, uh, I'm Hatate Himekaidou, of… Gensokyo… Whatever… Thingy." She waved one hand vaguely in the air. "Tonight's news is… you know..." She trailed off mumbling.

Sanae stopped the camera and hesitated before saying, "I'm not sure this is going to work..."

"Hey, look! I only said I was going to _give_ you the news! You're the one who started expecting me to read it in front of some box!"

"I guess that's true... Um. Well, for now, we can have somebody else read the stories, okay? Until you feel comfortable doing it yourself, I mean! If we did that, do you think you'd be able to do your first broadcast tomorrow? That should give you enough time to put together a story or two, right?"

"Oh, yeah, easy. I've pretty much already got the first story lined up, so it oughta be really easy to make it into a story for the news. This kinda stuff only needs to be a few minutes, right?"

"Well, it depends on how important the story is, but most of them aren't very long. What's the story?"

Rather than answer immediately, Hatate started fidgeting with her camera. After a few seconds, she turned it around and offered it over. "These guys."

Sanae stepped closer. Onscreen was a picture of a few… well, they looked like tengu. They definitely had the masks, at least. They all had crossbows slung over their shoulders, and most of them were hauling something else. Behind them, Sanae could just make out a dirt path. The rest of the surroundings were too dark to see much. "Um," she said. "Who are they?"

"They apparently call themselves the 'Tengu Anti-Human Militia,'" Hatate said, turning the camera back around. "They've been robbing lots of humans lately."

"I didn't know youkai did that kind of thing."

"I'm kinda surprised you haven't heard of them. They're causing a lot of trouble up on the mountain. The great tengu are going nuts trying to figure out who it is."

"Huh..."

"I guess as long as it isn't an incident or somebody killing humans, shrine maidens don't care about this kinda stuff, huh?"

"No, it's not that...! Just... I've been really busy with the radio station." Sanae flashed her a smile. "Don't worry, I bet Reimu's going to take care of it! … but if you've got a picture of them, don't you already know who they are?"

"Eh? No, it doesn't work like that at all. I use thoughtography."

"Thoughtography...?"

"I can take a picture of anyone, anywhere..." Hatate gave a proud smirk and flipped her camera shut. "But I kinda need, like, a good idea of what I'm going for, y'know?"

"Oh! Like Hermit Purple!"

"... Huh?"

"Um, never mind. So there are a bunch of youkai attacking people?"

"Robbing them or something, I guess. In the old days, we wouldn't care about this kinda thing. It happens every generation or two. A bunch of dumb kids feel like they've gotta prove something, they cause trouble for a while, eventually they calm down and, you know, stop being dumbasses. But now, we've got all this… _reputation_ and stuff to think about, so they wanna make sure everybody knows tengu society isn't behind this. Kinda boring, but it's enough for a story, right?"

"Right! That's pretty good for a first broadcast." Sanae grabbed the camera and hit the record button again. "Anyway, let's try that commercial one more time, okay?"

* * *

Hina's house wasn't much to look at. It wasn't something she'd built so much as _conglomerated_ : A few pieces of wood here, an added chimney there, and over the years what had started out as a tiny shack had turned into a cozy cottage, albeit one where no two boards were quite the same color. Inside, it was much the same, with every knickknack, trinket, or interesting memento she'd ever found scattered around many pieces of secondhand furniture.

And now, looking quite out of place, the television sat on a stool in front of her.

Getting it hadn't been as difficult as she'd worried. The line at Suzunaan had stretched out the door, but once she queued up and the other customers noticed her, half of them quietly excused themselves. A decent amount of those who remained, she'd recognized as disguised youkai. When she got to the front, the girl running the shop had taken a few minutes to answer her questions before making the sale, and Hina was the proud owner of a new television.

She'd been watching it for hours now, and it seemed like every program was weirder than the one before it. More important than the plots, though, were the people. As a connoisseur of human misfortune, Hina couldn't get enough of drama, and now, she had a direct feed of it to her living room, twelve hours a day. Better yet, the people didn't mind that _she_ was the one watching them. She could sit here and be a part of their lives, and nobody minded. Even if they were images on a screen, that wasn't a treat she got very often.

The credits to her fourth or fifth program rolled, and Hina considered whether she should turn the television off to save power. Before she could reach it, though, another program came on.

"Hello, Gensokyo! I'm Hatate Himekaidou, and I'm a normal tengu. But now, um, thanks to the new, uh, Gensokyo Channel One programming partnership, I, I um... have my own news show, which will be broadcast to possibly hundreds of humans."

Hina listened with rapt attention.

* * *

After four nights of robberies, Rumi had gotten used to the rhythm. Maeri would pick out a target and give them directions to it. They'd sneak down the mountainside, scout the place out, and attack it. Afterward, they'd make a break straight for the river and dive in, sneaking back to the hideout under the safety of water.

Rumi would feel much better if they could sneak _down_ the river too, but Maeri had made the fairly good point that people might get suspicious if the 'tengu' always showed up dripping wet.

Tonight's walk back upstream felt even longer than usual. The kappa formed a tidy procession as they slogged into the cavern and piled their new acquisitions near the door for later sorting. The eclectic mix of goods looked quite out of place in the cave: a small bag of precious stones, a crate of pottery, a few jugs of sake, a quiver of arrows, two bows, four waterlogged kimono, and even an entire bale of rice. Rumi had been in charge of the kimono, and had almost finished spreading them out to dry when a thunderous _WOOF_ echoed through the cave. The dog dashed out and leapt at her, and she had barely enough time to brace herself before he tackled into her tummy, almost bowling her over.

Maeri looked over from taking stock of the new acquisitions, a notepad in hand. "I think that dog's still getting bigger."

"Is he...?"

"He's still growing." Maeri turned to thrust her pen accusingly at him. Her dress for the day was an even more elaborate pile of frills than usual, and they didn't stop shaking back and forth until seconds later. "He's going to get even bigger."

"Really...?"

Ririsa grunted as she dropped off her load, then butted into the conversation. "Yeah, probably fill the whole place and crush us. It happens all the time."

"That... that doesn't actually happen, does it?" Rumi eyed the dog anxiously. Like most things that weren't fictional science, Rumi wasn't very knowledgeable about dogs _or_ sarcasm.

"I've heard they can get really big in the outside world," Maeri continued, ignoring the topic at hand. "Somebody I know said she found a human who had wandered across the barrier once, and the lady had a dog bigger than she was."

Maeri quieted down as Orisa approached and slid her own load of stolen goods into the pile. She leaned in and gave Orisa a kiss on the cheek, ignoring the annoyed grumble this drew from Ririsa. Orisa returned the kiss, then leaned in to peer over the dog."What's his name?"

"I haven't decided yet." Rumi reached down to ruffle his ears. A satisfied rumble came from deep in the dog's throat. "Maybe Tarou?"

"That's boring. ... Robo."

"Robo?"

"A better name."

"Tarou's a good name too..."

"It's boring," Orisa repeated, in the barely-mumbling tone she used for everything.

"I think it's cute!"

"Robo _is_ a pretty weird name for a dog," Maeri interjected. "... and Tarou's a boring name." She looked up from her notebook again. "He looks like a Miki. Or a Jasper. Not Tarou."

"A big dog like that needs a tough name," Ririsa said. "Spike, or something."

"I don't see why anybody else gets to name him," Rumi said. "He's my dog!"

"We were all there when we stole him."

"I'm the one who asked for him, though...!"

"Robo," Orisa repeated, insistently.

"We can call him a fur coat if you all keep squawking about it." Touko's voice somehow pierced into the conversation, even though she was all the way on the other end of the cavern.

"Not big enough," Orisa said. "Not even a dog like that. Takes a lot for a coat."

"We'd make it work," Touko grumbled.

"Three or four dogs, at least," Orisa continued, more quietly. "More if you want boots."

Touko took her time in approaching the group, only visible as a silhouette in the dimly-lit edges of the cavern. She stepped into the light, and all four watched apprehensively as she approached the coffee machine and filled her mug. She took a sip, and gave everybody a look that challenged them to try hurrying her. Nobody did. The 'grumpy and drinking coffee' look was a classic among kappa, and the argument seemed like a poor choice of hill to die on. "So," she said, "I'm gonna be real generous and assume that since you all have enough time to argue about a mutt, none of you have anything you need to be workin' on tonight."

A wave of guilty murmurs rose from the group. Nobody quite dared to meet Touko's eyes. Even Ririsa who, if the rumors were true, had once faced down the Hakurei shrine maiden for nearly fifteen seconds.

"Well, it'd hardly be fair for me to keep all the work for myself, now would it?" Touko grinned a grin that would probably cause holy symbols to tarnish in her presence. "Ririsa, why don't you run on down to the human village and see what news you can pick up?"

Ririsa grunted. "Can do. … dressed like a human, right?"

"Yeah, dressed like a human, because get this—you're gonna be around humans and trying not to pick a fight. It's a little thing I like to call 'subterfuge.' Go on, get moving. Maeri." Touko turned toward her next victim. "Double-checked all our plans for the big bang yet?"

"I'm working on it," Maeri said. "I'm pretty confident in the numbers, but whoever does it will need to be quite a fast runner. It's all downhill from the site, and the water—"

"One problem at a time. Orisa—how are the disguises holding up?"

"Good. Sturdy material. Wings aren't comfortable yet. Adjusting the harnesses."

"Rumi." Touko turned toward her. "Had any breakthroughs on them bombs yet?"

"Well, um..." Rumi hadn't realized that she was tensing up until Touko's eyes had fallen on her, but now that they were there, she felt like her heart was trying to squeeze down her throat into her stomach. "Not really... I'm running out of things to try, and the farms we've robbed so far, um, haven't had much stuff for me to experiment with... I'd thought they would, but..."

Rumi trailed off, expecting an outburst, but the others were mostly nodding in understanding. It was only common sense to keep a few kilograms of scrap and some drums of highly reactive chemicals on hand. You never knew what you'd need, after all. The human houses they'd raided didn't have so much as a single thermite welder. It really made you wonder how such a species got by.

"So what, you need more material?"

"Well... I can make a lot with what I have, but I need more ideas."

"So what you're sayin' is you can't do the job I hired you on for."

Rumi squirmed under Touko's gaze like an ant being tortured by a sadistic child. "Um, well... books usually help. If I can see what kind of ideas they've had in the outside world, it's easier to figure out what will work..."

"Books?"

"Uh-huh."

"Fine. What've you got on that front, Maeri?"

"Oh, ah." Maeri quickly fumbled a heavily-stained notebook out of her pocket and flipped through it. "For outside world books? There aren't many options, I'm afraid. Kourindou, but that's under the gap youkai's protection. Bad idea, probably doesn't even have the kind of stuff you want anyway. Oh, there's also Suzunaan. That's right by the river, even, so it should be easily accessible."

"Well, you see?" Touko said. "That right there's the power of teamwork. Just warms my heart, really." She pushed herself up from the table and yawned. "Start puttin' together a plan of attack for it. The farmhouses won't go nowhere if we leave 'em along for a night. Tomorrow, we'll take a break and hit this Suzunaan place."


	5. Chapter 5

Sanae skimmed over the treetops, and dropped to the ground as soon as she saw the station's tower peeking above the trees. Ever since she'd gotten used to flying as a part of everyday life, she'd taken to landing short of her destination. It gave her some time to brush the wind-made tangles out of her hair. The Gensokyo natives might have gotten accustomed to going everywhere with their hair messed up, but until somebody figured out how to make hairspray with Meiji-era technology, Sanae refused to budge.

Walking the last few hundred meters gave her time to think, anyway. She had a busy day ahead of her. Nitori was supposed to have another load of TVs ready, and the half that weren't going to the tengu village would need delivered to Suzunaan. She'd squeezed some time into the schedule for Hatate's first news broadcast, and desperately needed to sit Hatate down and figure out who was going to read it. She wanted to start putting together printouts of the station's schedule to distribute in the village, and there was still the question of buying more DVDs from Sumireko...

All of which was forgotten as soon as the station came into view.

There was a queue stretching out the door. Or a crowd, rather, but it was a crowd that looked like the members had at least heard of the _concept_ of a queue at some point. Youkai, gods, fairies, spirits, and at least one person Sanae was pretty sure was a disguised lunar rabbit, all shifting around and subtly jockeying to get closer to the door. Considering there were about two dozen youkai present, she supposed she should just be happy that none of them had tried dueling for line positions yet.

She paused for a moment, staring over the crowd in disbelief. It almost made her wish she'd brought her youkai extermination tools. Slowly, she made her way to the area that would be the back of the line, if this were an actual line. "Um, good morning!"

"No cutting!" replied a youkai near the very back. Sanae wasn't entirely sure what she was. She was short and squat, and had a pair of brown, fuzzy ears flattened back against her head. Some kind of beast youkai, apparently.

"Oh, I'm not trying to cut. I was just wondering, are you all here for the programming partnership... program?" She made a mental note to come up with a less redundant name for the initiative.

"I'm here for the thing where they stick you in a little box and let you show off to a hundred humans at a time," the youkai said, giving her a scowl.

"Ah, of course." Sanae glanced up the length of the line. It was probably the most youkai she'd ever seen in one place, outside of the tengu village. "How did you even hear about it?"

"You kidding me? Word about something like that gets around fast."

This still left Sanae with dozens of questions on her mind, but the youkai looked like her patience was running out quickly. It was probably better to drop it for now. "Right!" she said, and stepped away. "Thank you for your time!"

Sanae turned and carefully picked her way through the crowd, prompting the youkai to shout, "Hey, no cutting!" after her. She ignored her and kept walking. By the time she was halfway to the door, she could hear shouting from inside.

Nitori's voice was the first one she understood. "Out! Out! I don't want somebody like you in here messing things up!"

"Maybe if I could talk to the tengu who made the video...?" another voice answered. Something bumped into the door from the other side, and it rattled in its frame. "I'm sure that there's been a misunderstanding..."

"The only 'misunderstanding' here is a walking disaster area like you thinking you're welcome in here! Now..." The door opened with a dramatic shove. Sanae had to stumble backward to avoid being bowled over by it, and a few curious murmurs ran through the crowd of youkai. Nitori was left blinking up at her in surprise. "Oh, Sanae! Jeez, I'm glad you're here. Tell this mess that we don't want her in the station."

The view through the doorway was a strange one. Nitori's cheeks were red with annoyance and blustery anger, the most emotional Sanae had ever seen her. In front of her, backed up against the wall by the doorframe with her hands raised defensively, was Hina Kagiyama.

Hina looked almost as confused as Sanae felt, but she recovered first. "Good morning," she said, pulling away from the wall to dip a shallow bow toward Sanae. "Maybe you can help clear this up?"

Sanae glanced between the two. "Um, what's the problem? Why isn't she allowed in the station?"

Nitori looked at her like she'd grown a second head. A second head that was in the business of asking very dumb questions. "She's a goddess of misfortune! Everywhere she goes, things break! I'm already working full time to replace all our old capacitors while they can still hold a charge. If they start dying because we have this big sack of bad luck sloshing around the place, we won't even _have_ a TV station to—"

Sanae held up a hand to cut her off. "I think I understand," she said, and glanced back to Hina. "Er, was there something you needed?"

"Oh, yes!" Hina said, smiling for the first time during the conversation. "I bought one of your devices last night, and saw your advertisement!"

"Oh! So you were interested in making a show?"

"I am! It would... well. That is." Hina stumbled over her words for a few seconds, and her hands drifted up, starting to stroke anxiously at the tip of her hair. "I know that being around people causes... problems for them. I was hoping that with something like that, I'd be able to talk to people from far away, and then they wouldn't have to be afraid of having bad luck because of me."

"Oh, that does sound nice. But, um, what would you do? Do you have any kind of skills that would let you perform for half an hour every week?"

"Oh, hm. I'm not really good at that kind of thing. I can't sing, and I've never had a chance to go dancing... I really would like a chance to show humans that they don't need to be afraid of me, though." Hina's hands kept fretting at her hair faster and faster, until she paused, looking up. "Oh! I give really good advice."

"Advice...?"

"Right. I could show you. Is there anything you'd like advice on?" Hina offered with a smile.

Sanae considered this. It wasn't the most thrilling offer she'd gotten, but she probably wasn't going to find many youkai who could fill a half-hour program every week without some assistance. "How about this?" she said. "You can come inside, and we'll talk about it at and try to figure something out—"

Nitori grumbled under her breath.

"— _and_ , while you're in there, and any time you come to the station if we work something out, I'll put up seals so that your powers can't affect the rest of the station. Does that sound okay?"

"Oh, yes!" Hina said, clasping her hands in front of herself and smiling. "I really wouldn't want to cause any trouble for you."

Sanae glanced to Nitori. Nitori looked grumpily up to her and made a show of mulling it over. "I _guess_ she can't hurt much if we handle it like that."

"Great!" Sanae said. "Let's get started!"

* * *

An advice show.

After forty-five minutes of talking with Hina, it was the solution that Sanae had settled on. She'd tried convincing her to do a talk show at first, but Hina seemed confused about the concept, and inviting half a dozen youkai guests to the studio every week sounded like a recipe for disaster. The final approach, which Hina adored, was to encourage people to send letters to the station to ask for advice on matters, which Hina would do her best to answer on a live broadcast every week. Hina had thanked her profusely for the opportunity, and been on the verge of tears by the time it was all said and done.

But there were still two dozen other youkai waiting outside.

There were the Fairies of Light, who'd gotten very confused about the whole concept and thought that being broadcast would let them sneak into people's homes through their televisions. There was a mujina, who had proposed a show about different kinds of rocks she'd dug up. Kogasa had wanted to get on TV for a chance to surprise people over the airwaves. Lunasa showed up to ask about concert deals. Rinnosuke asked for a show to talk about items from his collection. Kokoro wanted to broadcast a Noh performance. There were at least four or five other youkai who showed up without any idea of what television was, because the rumors made it sound interesting.

In the end, they gave shows to half of the applicants, after ten hours of auditions, explanations, negotiations, and at one point, chasing fairies off with a broom. By then, Hatate had been ready for another round of practice at presenting the news. They'd spent nearly an hour drilling on it, and the best that Sanae could say for her was that Hatate no longer spent _quite_ so much time stuttering. By the time that finished, it was early evening, and they queued up the last few hours of video for the night and slumped to resting spots...

… only to remember that there was still a giant pile of televisions that needed delivered, sitting right there on the other side of the room.

* * *

"Alright," Touko said, speaking into her radio. "We're right about near the footbridge. What'm I lookin' for, Maeri?"

"Ah, hold on," Maeri's staticky voice replied. It was followed by the sound of rustling paper. "Alright, there should be shops on either side of the river. You want the rightmost one on the left side."

"Rightmost one on the—you couldn't find a more confusin' way to put that if you tried, could you?" Touko sighed and glanced back. "Rumi, peek your head on up there and see if you can spot it. Check if there're any humans around, while you're at it."

It was easier said than done. The kappa had sneaked along the bottom of the river, making their way down from the ravine to the human village. Here, it was only a couple of meters deep, just enough to hide them from any casual observers above, but not make them completely invisible. It was already a slightly nerve-wracking position to be in, and peeking out wasn't going to make it any less so.

Not that saying no to Touko seemed like a good idea either. "Um," Rumi said. "Right." She carefully made her way through the mud and up the banks of the river, until she could peek her head above the water. After a quick glance, she ducked back down. "There aren't any humans. But there's a dog."

"I don't care if there's a dog. What about the shop? Can you see it?"

"Suzunaan, right?"

"Right."

"How do you write that…?"

"You write it, uh… hey!" Touko lifted the radio again. "How's this place spelled?"

"It's 'suzu' like a bell!" Maeri replied. "Then 'na' like in, uh, um… like the first character in 'hell,' then 'an' like—"

"Yeah, that's plenty enough. Got that, Rumi?"

"Got it!" Rumi said. She darted her head above water, glanced around, and sank back down again. "I saw it!" she announced.

"Well, don't you just look proud? We just might teach you to read yet. Coast still clear?"

Rumi nodded.

"Good. Masks on, everyone. When I say go, we all hurry up there and around back. Any humans see you, you call out and everybody stops. If anybody figures out that these 'tengu' are sneaking around underwater, they'll catch on pretty quick. Got it?"

Nobody protested. They all pulled their tengu masks on.

"... and try to make this quick. Shouldn't be any trouble as long as we don't make a scene."

Touko shot a warning glance to Ririsa, who grumbled something that sounded vaguely like a confirmation.

"Get a move on!"

Collectively, the kappa rushed out of the water and up the river bank. Rumi glanced around wildly, but fortunately, there were no humans around... although at this point, she was more afraid of what Touko would do if somebody saw them. They hurried up along the wall of Suzunaan and around the back. Shielded from sight by a thin wall of trees, Rumi almost felt safer there. Almost.

Touko approached the back door and gave it a tentative try. It rattled in its frame. "Locked," she said, and looked back at the group. "Who's best at lockpickin'?"

They all exchanged glances.

"C'mon, don't be shy. It's just a human lock, shouldn't take more than ten seconds."

"I'll get it," Ririsa grumbled. She stepped into place in front of the door.

"Good. Orisa, you get up top and keep an eye out. While we're in there, if anybody walks up lookin' like they aim to go inside, you radio us. If anybody tries running out of the place, you shoot them. Got it?"

Orisa waved her off, but hovered up to clamber onto the rooftop.

"So, um." Rumi glanced to the door. "There could be people already in there, though, right...?"

"Awfully perceptive of you," Touko said. "Yeah, there might be some humans inside a building."

"I just mean, are we supposed to shoot them, or…?"

"Same as we always do. Hold them at gunpoint, do our thing, and get out. Startin' a fight in the village is the last thing we need."

"Could be fun," Ririsa said, as she wrestled with the door's lock. A final piece clicked into place, and she jerked it a few centimeters open. "If we played our cards right, we'd be stocked up on shirikodama for a few weeks."

"Fun as long as the shrine maiden or that black-white witch never showed up," Touko said. She stepped over and tugged the door open. "Come on, let's go. Real quiet-like, you hear?"

* * *

"I don't see why I have to do this kind of thing," Hatate said.

"Because," Nitori said. "If you want to be a part of the station, you don't just get to work only when it suits you."

"I dunno what's even the point of having a human around if you're not gonna make her do all the crappy work."

"She's been working all day. I can't say the same for you."

Hatate scoffed.

The hand cart rumbled behind them, loaded with a stack of TVs and a heap of batteries. Nitori had gotten the knack of building televisions quickly, and since her last visit to Suzunaan, she'd managed to throw twenty of them together. It was a bit more than the cart could easily hold, but a kappa was never content to be constrained by mere laws of physics. With a few meters of rope, some cargo webbing, a little elbow grease, and a lot of cursing, she'd managed to get all thirty TVs lashed to the cart. Or, in some cases, lashed to other TVs, or to the ropes themselves. The result looked like some kind of angular, wobbling mountain that just happened to have wheels sticking out at the bottom. It would hold together, though, even if she was going to need to reinforce the frame if she kept this up.

Besides, the worst was behind them now. The trip down Youkai Mountain had been perilous, with both of them needing to strain to keep the cart from rocketing down the slope. Now that they were on the mostly-level path leading into the human village, it only needed one of them to pull it, leaving the other mostly free.

'The other,' in this case, had been Hatate a slightly annoying amount of the time. Right now, as usual, she had her camera out, thumbing through thoughtography images on it.

"I'm not even that strong or anything," she said. "Don't you have any work that's more...?" She gestured vaguely with her camera.

"Easy?" Nitori asked sarcastically.

"I was thinking, you know, more like 'not pointless,' but whatever works."

"If we don't sell TVs, it doesn't matter how much news you throw together, because there won't be anybody to listen to it."

"Fine, fine. I just wish we didn't have to do it somewhere so..." Hatate gestured with her camera again, looking over their surroundings. "Human-y."

Nitori had to admit she had a point there. Kappa mostly lived in riverside caves and industrial compounds—nice, enclosed areas without much light, the sorts of places where you could get work done without getting interrupted by, say, the weather, or animals, or your next door neighbor. The tengu village was a weird place in her eyes, with tidy, wide avenues between the buildings, but at least it was orderly. Here in the human village, everything was chaos. There were _dogs_. Even now, one of them was glaring at her suspiciously from the front step of a shop. Nitori glared back and kicked a rock at it.

"We'll make our first delivery to tengu tomorrow. Sanae thinks we should focus on the humans until they slow down on buying TVs a little."

"And you're listening to what a human has to say about business, huh?"

"It's not like that…! I mean, it is, but..." Nitori drew to a stop for a moment, fidgeting with the brim of her hat as she tried to put together a better picture of what it _was_ like. "Sanae is… Sanae is pretty good for a human, okay? She's the one who figured out how to air stuff that people actually want to watch. She's pretty smart." 'Smart' was just the beginning of it, though. Sanae came up with plans with a speed and enthusiasm that was only beaten by kappa, and had a charisma that, if pressed, Nitori would admit she personally lacked.

She also had very good opinions on manga, so there was that.

Hatate gave her a skeptical glance over the top of her camera. "If you say so."

"Anyway," Nitori said, "I've dealt with the kid at Suzunaan before, so it'll be a piece of cake, even without Sanae. Just stick close and let me do the talking, alright?"

"Not like I want to talk to some human kid anyway."

The footbridge that spanned the river rumbled beneath them from the cart's wheels as they crossed. On the other side was Suzunaan.

This late in the evening, the shop was already closed up, the curtains in its front doorway drawn shut and a sign outside—CLOSED FOR THE NIGHT. Nitori pulled the cart to a stop and knocked on the frame. "Hey, Kosuzu, are you in there? We've got another delivery for you?"

No answer. After a few seconds, Nitori knocked again. "Hey, kid, it's the TV kappa! Open up!"

The only answer was hushed murmuring on the other side.

Nitori went silent, glancing from the door back to Hatate. "Does this seem weird to you?"

"I mean, humans are weird in general, but kinda, yeah."

"Right. ... let's go take a look."

* * *

Things had gone pretty smoothly so far. After opening the back door, it had only taken a few seconds for the kappa to make their way through the back room and into the shop. The place was closed, just like Maeri had said it would be, and the only person in the building was a single human, barely more than a girl. She was smart enough to not fight, and it had only taken about two seconds for Ririsa to get her under the desk, held at crossbow point.

The real challenge was the books. Rumi wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for, and this place had a lot of them: Youma books, books in other languages, children's books, magazines, owner's manuals for devices that had never made it into Gensokyo, reference books, encyclopedias... She leafed through them a few of them, but that was a lost cause. This place was pretty big. It would take all day to search it thoroughly, so she settled for skimming the titles on the spines, pausing only for anything that sounded vaguely science-y. The fact that she had to keep the tengu mask on didn't help, leaving her squinting at them through the mask's eyeholes.

One caught Rumi's eye, and she pulled it off the shelf to leaf through it.

"What's that?" Touko said, glancing at it from the other side of the shelf.

"Oh, um." Rumi shifted her posture slightly to turn the cover away from her. "Just a book."

"Looks to me like the front says _Mister Monkey Joins The Circus_."

"Oh..." Rumi glanced down at the book again, like she was hoping to find an explanation there. Really, she was just looking for an excuse to avoid Touko's glare. "It does, doesn't it?"

Touko stepped over and yanked it out of her hands. "Stop screwin' around, or I'll send you alone next time."

"Right. Sorry." Rumi still pouted after the book. Now she'd never find out what job Ringmaster Jirou picked for Mister Monkey.

Before she could focus on her search again, Orisa's voice broke the silence over their radios. "Watch out. People coming."

Touko lifted her radio. "What kinda people are we talkin'?"

"Uh. It's Nitori."

Even Ririsa took a break from looking for valuables to glance toward the radio in shock.

Nitori was not a person that an outlaw kappa ever wanted to see. By kappa standards, she was a goody-two-shoes; she almost never sold human customers counterfeit goods, and only overcharged them by thirty percent. She was well-known and popular among kappa and other youkai alike. The fact that Ririsa had stood up to the shrine maiden in a fight to the death had made her a hero, but Nitori was a _legend_. She'd fought the shrine maiden three or four times, and the witch a few times too.

More importantly, like most kappa, she knew most of the kappa in Gensokyo by name, and she wasn't likely to be fooled for long by something so simple as a mask.

Before anybody could recover, Nitori's voice came from the doorway. "Hey, Kosuzu, are you in there? We've got another delivery for you."

All three kappa froze, looking toward the door. Ririsa hurried out from under the desk and gave her crossbow a pointed thrust toward the human girl under the desk, making it clear what would happen if she responded.

"Hey, kid!" Nitori shouted. "It's the TV kappa! Open up!"

Ririsa glanced to Touko and muttered, "Fighting or running?"

"We're staying put until we get that book," Touko whispered back. Shrugging her crossbow off her shoulder, she glanced to Rumi. "Let Orisa know we might need to move our butts. You keep lookin' for now, though."

"Um, right..." Rumi fumbled her radio from its position on her belt and whispered into it. "Orisa, are you there...?"

A barely-audible mumble came back in response. That was probably a yes.

"Um, we can't fight her! Touko says we might have to run away."

Orisa huffed. "Got it."

A click came over the radio as Orisa turned her end off. Rumi didn't waste any time. She shoved the radio onto a shelf, freeing up both hands to search the books. A cloud of dust rose from them; as she coughed and sneezed, she made a mental note to put a feather duster in the next version of her prosthetic arm.

Ririsa hurried away from the door, while Touko lowered her crossbow, resting one end against the floor. On the front was a brace, which she slipped her foot into. Near the back was a ripcord, which she grabbed and yanked on with all of her might. Throughout the device, gears, levers, armatures, pistons, and flywheels all spun to life, carrying the energy down through its length. Touko's particular crossbow had a squat ammo drum on top, and it was was soon spinning so quickly that its details smeared into a single circular blur.

Rumi stared at this display. "What... _is_ that thing?"

"I'm a weaponsmith, ain't I? Special model all of my own." Touko hefted the weapon and leveled it at the door. "You've got two or three minutes to find that book. Wouldn't waste 'em, if I was you."

Nitori peeked through the doorway. In response Touko cut loose with a barrage of bolts, and the clatter of machinery filled the air. "STAY BACK! THIS HERE'S A STICKUP!"

* * *

 _It sounded like a hailstorm._

 _It sounded like what being a drum probably felt like._

 _It sounded like a hundred very angry pencils trying to burrow through—_

Hatate had been punching notes into her camera for her inevitable news article on today's events, but was interrupted by Nitori angrily shoving it aside. "Is this really the time?!"

"What, do you think I'm going in there?!"

"Look, I—!" A bolt blasted through the curtain mere centimeters in front of her face, and Nitori went silent with a squeak. She stumbled backward and hurriedly patted herself down. "Rule number one! If somebody shoots at you, you shoot them back!"

"Hey, I've got that covered, at least." Hatate carefully leaned over and held her camera's lens right in front of the hole through the curtain. It emitted a very synthesized-sounding shutter click.

"Yeah, really funny."

"Look, I'm a reporter, and this is _definitely_ news."

"Could be a bit more helpful, though...!" Nitori's search didn't reveal much. With the TV delivery, she hadn't brought her backpack, so she was traveling light. Only two grenades, a modestly-sized pistol, and a remote-control quadcopter she was pretty sure she'd installed some kind of dart launcher into at some point. For now, she settled on the pistol. A shame, but it'd have to do. She'd just have to hope this wasn't one of her water gun prototypes; her first attempt at building one was only useful as a paperweight, and a few other iterations weren't good for much except maybe a bidet for somebody _very_ adventurous. "Move over."

Hatate stepped aside, and Nitori pressed herself against the wall, still feeling it shiver against her back with every bolt impact.

The thuds trailed off. Nitori very cautiously peeked around the corner and caught a glimpse of the figure behind the desk, hurrying to reload the crossbow. She lined up a shot and fired.

She'd picked a traditional firearm today, it turned out. It recoiled in her hand, letting out a sharp snap that echoed within the store. Her assailant yelped in surprise and stumbled backward, and the bookshelf behind her shuddered as the bullet tore through it.

"You're welcome to try that again if you wanna lose a hand!" The figure inside the store straightened up, and Nitori took another shot before ducking aside and pushing her back against the wall. She moved too quickly to even see where the shot landed, but judging by the volley of bolts that shot back through the curtain moments later, she hadn't hit her mark.

"How many of those things can she _have_?!" Hatate whined, hunkered over with her hands over her head.

"A lot, apparently!" Nitori said, having to shout over the clamor of bolts.

And then, it stopped.

In the aftermath of the clamor, the world sounded entirely too silent. Nitori was acutely aware of her heartbeat as she glanced toward the doorway. The curtain had been shredded into something more like a net, with scraps of cloth and splintered bolts spread out across the ground beneath it. The pile of stray bolts extended out from the door, only tapering off at the banks of the river behind them.

Only after a couple of seconds of silence did Hatate relax her posture and breathe again. "This kind of stuff doesn't happen much in the TV business, does it?"

"I wouldn't know," Nitori said. "I've only been doing it for a few days."

She leaned around the corner and peeked into the store again. There wasn't a hint of movement inside. After a brief wait to reassure herself that the close was clear, she pushed through the tattered curtain. "Come on, let's go!"

"Go where? … after the crazy people?"

"After the people who just _shot at us_! Come on, you're a reporter, right?"

"Usually I leave all the dumb reckless stuff to Aya!" Even so, Hatate hurried after her.

She dashed through the store, weaving around the front desk and jumping over the fallen bookshelf. She ducked into the shop's crowded back room and knocked over an avalanche of stacked books in the process. She managed to get past them threw the back door open, and ran outside.

The tengu were nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Rumi fumbled with it as she ran, and only barely managed to slide the book into one of her waterproof pockets before she reached the banks of the river. She half-stumbled, half-leapt into it, but disappeared beneath the surface as soundlessly as any other kappa. There were some skills so basic that even she was good at them.

She was the last to arrive. The others were already waiting for her, crouched in a semicircle beneath the water. Touko had her crossbow slung over the shoulders, while Ririsa was lugging the small pile of junk she'd stolen on the way out. No sense in wasting an opportunity, after all.

"You get what you needed?" Touko said, before the mud had even cleared from her landing.

"I found a book! I, um, think it will work. It would have been nice to look a bit longer, but..."

"But you ain't getting that. Come on." Touko slid her mask off and stepped into the center of the river, where she had to brace herself against the current. "If Nitori's in there, we can't just lollygag around underwater all day. Get moving."

* * *

"A few books, a TV, and an ink pen," Nitori said, once they'd reviewed the encounter. She glanced across the wall, still bristling with crossbow bolts like a very irritable pufferfish. "This seems like a lot of work if that's all they were going to steal."

"Mmhm." Kosuzu gave a weak nod and wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. The girl had been paralyzed with fear after the intruders had left, and it had taken the better part of two minutes to coax her out from under the desk. She was still glancing back toward the door every few seconds, like she was expecting somebody else to bust in.

Nitori wasn't generally overflowing with sympathy, but the sight stirred what little she had. She patted Kosuzu's shoulder. "Since it was a robbery, I won't hold the missing TV against you. It's the cost of doing business or something. But, uh." She glanced toward the back room. "I could install a better lock if you want. Human ones are crap, trust me."

Kosuzu nodded again, sniffling. "Maybe..."

"A TV's a pretty small price to pay for this kinda thing anyway," Hatate said.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, that was those tengu anti-human guys, right? And we saw, y'know, an actual live attack. We call that an 'eyewitness story' in the news business. And..." Hatate turned her camera to show them the screen, smirking. "That picture I took was great."

The screen showed the view through one of the holes in the curtain, with cloth just barely visible around the edges. In the middle, one of the tengu was posed dramatically, with her crossbow leveled at the camera, glaring through her mask's eyeholes. "Like, look at it! With a picture like this, the Bunbunmaru is pretty much toast! It's gonna be great!"

"Uh-huh, well, that's good." Nitori stepped past her to survey the room. "Doesn't it seem weird, though? All that work just to steal a few things? They didn't even take the cash box from under the desk."

"Eh, like I said, they're dumb kids. Who knows what they're thinking?"

"Yeah, I guess." Nitori looked back to the bolt-peppered front wall. "That's a lot of bolts for one or two crossbows, though... Are tengu crossbows really that good?"

"I dunno. Probably. Do I look like I know anything about crossbows?"

Before Nitori could retort, she was cut off by an unseen speaker. "Hey, guys? So, er, did you get out of that place, or...? I'm starting to get kind of antsy, you know." The voice came from somewhere in the room, and had a staticky, flat quality.

The three of them glanced around in confusion. Nitori was the first to spot it.

There, sitting on a shelf toward the back of the room, was a two-way radio.

Nitori approached and picked it up. "Yeah, yeah, we're out," Another voice answered. "No thanks to you. Kinda forgot to mention this bookstore of yours does business with a kappa, didn't ya?"

"A kappa? Huh? What are you—?"

"Don't you worry your pretty head over it. Me and you will have a nice, long talk about that when we get back. You just focus on planning for tomorrow."

"Got it, boss. … sorry."

The one end of the conversation gave an annoyed grunt. The radio went silent as the two stopped talking.

Hatate was left staring uncertainly at the device. "Er, what is that thing?"

"This," Nitori said, offering it over with a grin. "Is your new top story."

* * *

The walk back up the mountain was usually the less pleasant part of the round trip to the village, but today, Nitori's mind was buzzing with ideas. They'd left the radio running on the empty cart. For the first twenty minutes or so, it had continued chirping out the occasional short exchange between two speakers. Now, though, it had gone quiet, leaving them to ponder exactly what it had been about in the first place.

As soon as they'd parked the cart outside the station, Nitori hurried inside, holding it aloft. "Hey, Sanae! Things are looking up!"

"Huh?" Sanae's voice came from the studio. Nitori and Hatate made their way back, to find Sanae siting at the mixing desk. She peered at the radio curiously, even as Nitori stood on her tiptoes to shove it into her face.

"Hatate and I just ran into those tengu militia types!"

"Really...?"

"They were kinda sad for a 'militia,' but yeah, we did!" Hatate said.

"We weren't really their main focus anyway. They were robbing Suzunaan."

"Suzu—is Kosuzu okay?!"

"Who...? Oh! The human girl, right. Yeah, sure, she's fine, never been better. So anyway," Nitori continued, "they were attacking Suzunaan. So here's what I'm thinking: if Hatate does a live broadcast right now, it will be the first place anybody in the village hears about it. That has to be worth something, right?"

Hatate froze in place, a slight flush rising to her cheeks. "A-ah, what? Live...?"

"Live!" Nitori repeated. "Think about it! The Bunbunmaru's going to need at least an entire day to get the story and print papers, right?"

"Right..."

"So if you broadcast it right now..."

"... then by time Aya gets the story out, nobody will even care what her dumb rag has to say!" Hatate's sudden excitement faded almost as soon as it had blossomed. "But I can't do that! Talking in front of that camera thing is hard enough without jumping in there without practice! I need some time to work my way up to it!"

"Nobody's going to watch it if you wait until the middle of the night!"

"Yeah, but...! Jeez. I can write a story, but I'm not reading it unless I get a few hours to practice, okay? I'm not even joking. If I'm doing this junk, I wanna do it right."

"Is there something you need read? Could I do it, then?" Nitori and Hatate's argument came to a halt, as a third voice broke in. There, sitting at one of the usually-unoccupied desks along the wall of the studio, Hina had been quietly sitting all along, with a book in front of her. Hanging on the desk in front of her was a Moriya sealing amulet, made out of what looked like the flap to a cardboard box and written in black paint. Hina seemed oblivious to their surprise, and simply smiled calmly at them. "It really wouldn't be any trouble!"

Nitori gave her an uncertain glance. "Have you been here ever since this morning...?"

"I have, yes. I'd thought that maybe I should start planning my show. Oh! I hope that's okay. I wouldn't want to impose..."

"She's been working _really_ hard!" Sanae added.

"Er. Well. I guess that's fine." Now didn't feel like a good time to question that too much. As long as Hina didn't start trying to get paid hourly, it would be fine. "... how's that sound then, Hatate?"

"Sounds great. Like I said before, I don't wanna do the dumb reading stuff anyway. I'm just here to _write_ the news."

"Are you sure you can write something that quick?"

"Jeez, come on." There was a pen in Hatate's hand before she finished talking. "I'm an expert at this junk. Give me ten minutes."

"Great!" Hina said. "Can I watch so I can start memorizing the lines?"

"... I mean, sure, if you want."

Hatate and Hina gravitated to one corner, while Sanae busied herself with the mixing desk to prepare for broadcast. Nitori just slumped into a seat. "It's been," she announced to nobody in particular, "a really long day."

"It really has," Sanae agreed, stifling a yawn.

"... and I should probably come early tomorrow to finish the stuff I was working on before all those people showed up..."

"Hmm..." Sanae glanced up from the desk. "If you've been working all day, you should take some time to relax, though!"

"There's still stuff to do. I can't help it."

"What do you need to do?"

"The capacitors still need replaced. I want to make sure none of the cabinets break without warning."

"But they've been working this whole time, right? Can't it wait a while longer?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"Aha!" Sanae declared, pointing a finger at Nitori with a triumphant grin. "See, you have time then! You can come in a bit later tomorrow, and everything will be fine."

"I don't mind doing it, you know."

" _I_ mind it! You asked me to manage this place, right? That includes things like making sure people aren't overworked!"

"Kappa really don't do the whole 'time off' thing..."

Sanae pouted, but she didn't look like she was going to be dissuaded that easily. Soon, a smile lit her face again. "Well, how about this? Tomorrow is my day to cook breakfast at the shrine. You could stop by on your way to the station, and we can talk about business stuff over breakfast. It's _kind_ of like working."

Nitori didn't bother to point out that she had to fly almost past the station to get to the shrine. Her first impulse was to turn it down, _especially_ in light of her experience the last time she'd visited the shrine, but...

But apart from shirikodama, she hadn't eaten actual food in days. Or had a conversation that didn't revolve around programming schedules and TV pricing rates. Or, really, spent any time outside of her own hideout, the station, and Suzunaan.

Briefly, Nitori wondered when she'd last had a bath, then hurriedly decided that she'd rather not know.

"Er, well. Maybe if it's not too much trouble..."

"Of course not!" In the blink of an eye, Sanae was around the desk. She grasped Nitori's hands and beamed down at her. "It'll be fun! Plus, the harvest is still coming in, so I'm cooking way too much stuff! You'd practically be doing me a favor. So, do you want to do it? Maybe we could even make it a weekly thing!"

Nitori was frozen in place for a moment. She wasn't sure if anybody had ever held her hand before, unless you counted brief moments while handing somebody a wrench. Plus, compared to Sanae's, her hands felt very small and calloused.

It took a few seconds to drag her thoughts back to reality. "Ehe, um, sure," she said, with an anxious laugh. "It could be fun."

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Gensokyo's first live news broadcast was aired.

"Good evening, Gensokyo. I'm Hina Kagiyama with Gensokyo Channel One news, provided by Hatate Himekaidou. In the future we'll be doing this at a regular time, but tonight we have important news to report. It seems that the bookstore Suzunaan in the human village was attacked by members of the Tengu Anti-Human Militia, barely an hour ago. Oh, I have an eyewitness account here, let me read it..."


	6. Chapter 6

Nitori had never been inside the Moriya shrine before. It turned out to be an interesting contrast to the Hakurei shrine—the living areas were all modern, with electric lights, power outlets, and even a few electronic devices scattered throughout the rooms. She was almost certain that with a few hours of poking around the place, she could learn a few outside world tech tricks.

But, that wasn't why she was here.

In front of her, Sanae hummed to herself as she led the way through the narrow hallways. As usual, she was impossibly energetic for the morning, despite getting to bed just as late as Nitori had. "You got here just in time!" she said. "I just finished the pancakes a few minutes ago!"

"Pancakes...?"

"Pancakes!"

Nitori nodded uncertainly at this. She wasn't sure what a pancake was, but presumably it was some kind of cake that came from a pan. Most human food was way too sweet for kappa tastes anyway, so anything with 'cake' in the name probably tasted like it could rot her teeth at ten paces. Things were off to a bad start already.

She'd never really done this kind of thing before, so it wasn't surprising. She'd been to parties and collaborated with people in their workshops, but never visited somebody just for the sake of visiting them. It was another one of those weird human customs, and like most of them, she wasn't sure how it was supposed to work. She idly wondered if the guest was supposed to bring flowers or something. Humans seemed to like that sort of thing.

It was probably best to just push forward and hope for the best.

"A-ah, yeah, sounds great," she said, without an ounce of sincerity. "So anyway, I've been keeping an eye on that radio from last night, but they haven't used it again. Or, well, if they did, it didn't wake me up."

"Huh... well, I'm not going to give up that easily. Next time they use it, we'll hear as soon as they start moving, and then, bam! I'll be waiting for them!"

"Ah, good idea! If you sneak around and film all their attacks, we'd get some great footage for the news. That should hook the viewers for sure, right?"

"Huh? No, I'm going to stop them!"

"… oh. Right, yeah. That makes sense too."

Sanae led the way into the shrine's main living area. On the table, true to her word, was a small pile of what Nitori could only assume were pancakes. The shrine's two goddesses were already sitting on either side, with mostly-finished plates in front of them. Kanako only idly glanced at them over the top of the Bunbunmaru she was reading. "Oh, good morning."

"Good morn—"

"Oh, hey," Suwako said, cutting Nitori off. "It's the suitor. Welcome back."

"I told you before," Nitori said through clenched teeth. "I'm not a suitor."

"Of course you aren't." Suwako shot her a coy wink.

"... are you just trying to make this hard for me because I was a little rude to you that first visit?"

"What? Me? I'd never do something like that!"

Kanako folded her paper and lightly swatted the shorter goddess on the head with it. "I've told you to be nice to Sanae's visitors."

"Hey, this _is_ nice! If I wanted to be mean, I'd call down a plague of locusts."

"It's been a millennium since the last time you pulled that off."

"A millennium's as good as yesterday for somebody like me. Want to try me?"

"Er, anyway!" Sanae raised her voice to cut off the conversation. "Nitori and I had a late night last night, so I invited her over to talk about business stuff over breakfast."

"Oh, a working brunch?" Kanako said, glancing between the two with a smirk. "You're turning into a real businesswoman, Sanae."

"That's right! I'm doing finances and everything!"

"Suwako." Kanako gave her another tap on the head with her folded paper. "We should give them some privacy."

"Eh? I wanted another pancake, though."

"Then you can eat it when they're done."

"Fine, fine." Suwako slid from her seat and settled her hat onto her head, then shot Nitori a warning glance. "But if they're all gone when I get back, I'm cursing your family to the tenth generation."

"Er." Nitori glanced from Suwako to Sanae, entirely uncertain whether this threat was serious or not. Sanae's neutrally-pleasant expression held no hints. "I'll keep that in mind?"

Suwako gave a satisfied nod. As the two goddesses left the room, Sanae stepped around the table and settled into a seat. "I'm sorry about Lady Suwako. She means well, but sometimes she can be kind of..."

"A jerk?"

"I was going to say 'mischievous,' but..."

"Oh. That too."

"Anyway! Dig in!"

Sanae pushed the mountain of pancakes closer, and Nitori eyed them warily. This close, they smelled entirely too sweet, but Sanae's beaming, expectant expression didn't leave much room to turn them down politely. After a moment's calculation, she slid two of them onto her plate. Sanae was still watching, so she cut a small bite off of one and pushed it into her mouth.

"Good?" Sanae asked.

To Nitori's tastebuds, it tasted like eating pure treacle with a spoon made of sugar. She took a hurried sip of water to hide her cringe. "A-ah, yeah, it's great! Really... cake-y."

"I'm glad you like them!"

Sanae's attention turned toward her own plate, and Nitori got to work dissecting her pancakes. There were chunks of fruit inside, and she could at least stomach those.

Silence loomed.

Nitori didn't mind it, but it occurred to her that humans usually talked during things like this. And Sanae was a human, even if she lacked most of the species' flaws. She fretted a chunk of apple out of the pancake and popped it into her mouth, then fidgeted with her fork as she considered how to approach it. What kind of things did humans even talk about...?

"The weather today is really, um—" she glanced toward a window. "—cloudy."

"Huh?" Sanae glanced toward the window too. "Oh. Yep!"

It wasn't quite the conversational silver bullet that Nitori been hoping for. "It might rain soon?"

"Mmhm, I guess so," Sanae said, then glanced up from her food, looking quizzically at Nitori. "... is everything okay?"

"Huh? Yeah, everything's fine!" she said, then nervously added, "… is there a reason they should be _not_ okay?"

"Oh, no, I just mean... you seem kind of, um... distracted."

"Oh. Right." Nitori glanced down at her pancake to stall for time, making a precise incision to extract another piece of apple. "I'm just not used to this kind of thing, I guess."

"Breakfast...?"

"The whole... talking, and you know."

"Ohhhh." Sanae nodded knowingly. "I know what you mean. When I was in school, I wasn't really good with people, myself."

"What, really?"

"Uh-huh! When I was little, I kinda slipped up and told my entire class that I was learning to fly and my great-great-grandma was a goddess. After that it was all, 'oh, that's Sanae, the crazy girl.' By the time I was old enough to really understand... um, well, I'd kind of gotten used to being by myself. It took me a while to get used to doing social stuff again once we moved to Gensokyo."

Nitori gave a slow nod and tried to picture that. She couldn't, really. Practically every encounter she'd had with Sanae had involved the shrine maiden plowing straight into the heart of the conversation, energetic and excited, like some kind of especially good-natured tornado.

"So, anyway!" Sanae said, while Nitori was still working through the mental image. "After I got home last night, I worked on the schedule a bit more. With all the new shows from yesterday, I think we have enough programming for now! If we put on one or two local shows at prime time every day, that should give us some nice variety, don't you think?"

"You did even more work once you got home?"

"Well, a little. Also, I was thinking, maybe today I'll see if I can catch Sumireko and convince her to buy a camcorder for us. That's, um, a little hand-held portable video camera. If we had one of those, we could report news from where it happens! It might be pretty useful for making new shows, too..."

Despite herself, Nitori was snickering by the end of the explanation, and Sanae trailed off, looking at her uncertainly. "Huh? What's wrong? … you don't like it?"

"Ahh, no, no!" Nitori coughed and took a moment to steady herself. "It's just... jeez. Do you even rest?"

"I mean... I do, but... it's fun to stay busy. Besides! You're the one who was busy all day yesterday and refused to take time off until I made you! They call that being a 'workaholic' in the outside world, you know."

"Eh, yeah, I guess so. That's pretty normal for a kappa, though. It's just weird to find a human like that."

"We've _both_ worked a lot lately. That's why I invited you out here! Well, I mean, one reason. You're always working hard, so I thought it would be nice to do something to thank you. I mean, um. I can't really help you with the electric stuff, but... pancakes are the best I can do, sorry."

" _Thank_ me?"

"Yep! For doing so much to get the station started. It's actually been really fun so far, don't you think?"

'Fun' wasn't a topic that crossed Nitori's mind that often... but she had to admit, the week since they'd started working on the station had been an entertaining one. Usually, she accepted working with other people as a bitter necessity in large projects. With Sanae, though, it was painless. Enjoyable, even.

Nitori froze for a moment as she considered the frighteningly unfamiliar implications of that. "A-ah, yeah, I guess you're right. It's been pretty fun."

Sanae nodded again, beaming and looking pleased with herself. "I'm glad! Anyway, finish eating up. It looks like we've got another long day ahead of us."

* * *

It was not-uncommonly remarked that Rumi's mind seemed to exist on a different plane of existence from everybody else's.

In some ways, that wasn't entirely wrong.

Rumi had spent half the night reading her stolen books from Suzunaan, filling her head with inventions that even the outside world thought was impossible: machines so small that they could assemble atoms, computers that thought for themselves, printers that could build anything from the right raw materials, machines that could shoot messages back in time.

Most of it wasn't much good for the task at hand, especially with the materials she had. Some of it slipped right through her head without inspiring any inspiration.

A few stuck, though. Slowly, they grew outward into a blueprint.

Her hands were moving almost before she realized it, picking just the right pieces from her scrap pile. She hammered a few of them into a casing, and only knew she'd found the right shape when she saw it. She plucked a few electronic components and glued them inside. She flipped a soldering iron out of a fingertip on her prosthetic arm and made a few new connections between them. She absently brushed her hand across the bottles of chemicals by her workbench and grabbed the ones that felt correct; after mixing them over heat and letting them cool, they formed a crystal, which she placed into an assemblage she hadn't even known she'd made.

Rumi didn't know how to make a teleporter. Or a time machine, or a prosthetic arm for that matter. She could barely manage to make a birdhouse if left to her own devices, and to be honest, the result would only be suited for the less dignified sort of bird. Sometimes, though, if she squinted, she could just barely make out the idea-shaped holes where a device _could_ be. She wasn't sure why it didn't work for anybody else. Antigravity, time machines, teleporters—these things were just as much a part of human fantasy as any kappa or tengu. All they needed was a helping hand to introduce them to Gensokyo.

Slowly, pieces fitted together, in accordance with a design that she was glimpsing only in brief flashes. Only once she put a few screws in and could find no more instructions in her thoughts did she know that she had a finished product. She sat it aside and moved on to another, then another.

And, suddenly, an explosive noise dragged her out of her fugue.

Rumi was left blinking down at her workbench in shock. Two orderly rows of devices lined the back of it, attesting to her productivity. Her clock said that six hours had passed. She certainly couldn't prove it, but the exhaustion that was fogging her brain gave it some credibility.

The first noise was followed by a second, as the stolen dog lunged toward the door and let out a bone-rattling bark.

The dog's name was Robo now, she supposed. He didn't answer to it, but Orisa had insisted on it, and while she didn't talk much, it turned out that he could be _very_ stubborn. At the moment, he was standing at guard, glaring suspiciously toward the doorway. With a yawn, Rumi plodded over to stroke his head. "Is something out there...?"

He gave a soft woof, without taking his eyes off the door.

"Um..." If she strained, she could just barely make out the noise of screams and loud bangs echoing through the tunnel. She was just starting to make sense of it when Robo gave another thunderous woof and leapt through the curtains, bounding off toward the strange sounds.

"Hey, wait...!"

Rumi sprinted after the dog, but she couldn't quite keep up. Kappa weren't the best at moving on land to begin with, and he had a two-leg advantage over her. He turned the corner, charging into the main cavern, and she hurried after him.

Everybody else was already there. In the middle of the room, they'd sat the box they'd stolen from Suzunaan the night before. Now, though, a moving image occupied the entire screen on front, and it seemed to be the source of the noise, too.

Robo charged into the middle of the group to demand petting. Rumi moved more slowly.

"Keep the dog quiet," Ririsa griped, without glancing away from the box.

Rumi stepped forward to settle down next to Robo, petting his head to calm him down. She leaned in to peer over the device. "What's it doing...?"

"Movies," Orisa said. "Outside world stuff."

Orisa was currently sprawled in Maeri's lap, while Maeri combed her hair out with her fingers. Seeing her glance over, Maeri shot her a look to warn her away from commenting. It was still weird, though. Very weird. She'd seen humans doing that kind of thing from time to time, but never kappa. Rumi studied the scene as well as she could from the corner of her eye. She leaned over toward Ririsa and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Are Orisa and Maeri, um..." She hesitated to fish a word from her memory, and lowered her voice even farther. " _Sisters_?" Kappa weren't big on family.

"They're weirdos, is what they are," Ririsa grumbled, just loud enough for the two to hear her. "Shut up and watch the movie."

It left Rumi with a lot of questions, but she wasn't about to test Ririsa's patience. Instead, she settled in to watch the strange box. Onscreen, two machines were traveling through a desert. One of them was golden, human-shaped, and seemed really bad at walking, and the other one looked like some kind of rolling trash can.

Rumi leaned in to inspect them more closely. "What are _those_ things?"

"Hey, could you maybe not do that?" Maeri griped. "Some of us are trying to watch it."

"Sorry." Rumi settled back into position. Robo flopped his head into her lap, ensuring that she'd be stuck in place for the foreseeable future anyway.

"That one isn't very smart," Orisa explained, pointing at the taller robot onscreen. "That one's a jerk. Some human hired them."

"Huh..." It was the most words Rumi had ever heard out of Orisa's mouth in one go. That alone was surprising. "So that's what this box is for? It shows you... metal people?"

"Near as we can tell," Touko said, sounding like she was annoyed by the entire concept. "Doesn't look like it's good for much else. The way I figure it, that kappa we ran into down in the village was behind it all."

"Nitori," Ririsa said.

"Who?"

"Nitori Kawashiro. She's a pretty big deal. After you got banished, though."

Touko grunted. "Yeah, well, one of those bullets clipped me yesterday, so I have a good mind to take her out on general principle."

For a few seconds, there was no sound in the room except the complaining robot on screen. Ririsa broke the silence. "Don't think we need to kill Nitori, boss."

"We'll kill whoever we need to kill. You were ready to gun down humans yesterday, weren't ya?"

"Humans and kappa are different."

" _And_ either one of those violates the spell card rules," Maeri added. "A few robberies where nobody gets hurt are one thing, but if you add random murder onto the ledger, we'll have the Hakurei shrine maiden hunting for us, and at this point we _really_ can't afford to—"

Touko cut her off. " _You about done_?" Maeri immediately clammed up, but Touko held her gaze for a moment, then shot a withering look around the room for good measure. Only when nobody rose to challenge her did she relax and move on. "Not like it matters who she is, anyway. If this other kappa's making toys for humans, she's not gonna get in our way. This thing, on the other hand..." Touko gave the TV a halfhearted shove with her foot. "If I catch any of you starin' at it when you ought to be working, it's going right into my personal loot pile. Are we clear on that?"

A halfhearted wave of agreement rose from the collected kappa.

"Speaking of which." Touko skewered Rumi with a glance. "You've been holed up in that room of yours since we got back. Bein' productive, or trying to hide something?"

Rumi tensed up so much that she barely managed to squeak out, "Productive!" The minor outburst disturbed Robo, and he rolled over to demand tummy rubs in compensation. "Um, I mean, I think I have it! They're like... bombs that make gravity reverse?"

"Like what? Push things apart?"

"Make things fall up. … Um, I mean, I think. I haven't... tested them yet. But they should work!"

"Make things fall up, huh?" Touko rubbed her chin. "Yeah. Yeah. Think that could do it. Have 'em ready to go tonight. House oughta make for a pretty good test run, right?"

Rumi shifted uneasily in place. She'd known what was coming next the whole time. Touko had never made any secret about that. Once they'd gotten the humans' attention with the nightly raids, they'd spend a night or two destroying houses to make damn sure that every human in Gensokyo knew about the 'tengu' attacks, and then...

Well, then, it would be time to take on the human village.

She'd known what was coming, but only now that it was staring her in the face did it really occur to her that _maybe_ , smashing some humans' houses was wrong. Stealing was one thing, of course, and a perfectly respectable hobby for a youkai. Blowing up houses seemed kind of unnecessary, though. There was lots of cool stuff inside some of them, to begin with.

"Hey," Touko said, leaning in. "Are you hearing me?"

"Huh? Um, oh." Rumi's attention snapped back to the outside world, and she fussed with her clothes to make a show of being awake. "Right! Ready tonight. Got it."

"Good. Now, time to talk plans for tonight." Touko jabbed the TV's power button with her foot, turning it off and eliciting a chorus of groans from the others. She ignored them. "Speakin' of which, Maeri, who're we hitting?"

* * *

Today had been another busy day. After breakfast, Sanae had hurried down the mountain to catch Sumireko on the tail end of her nightly visit and make arrangements for a camcorder. When she got back, Hatate was running around the station in a panic, trying to find topics for the night's news. One of the cabinets in the front room had died in a shower of sparks, and while Nitori hadn't been able to say what it was for, the broadcasts hadn't had any sound for two hours while she was patching it up.

And, seven more youkai and one bold human had shown up to ask for shows.

The interviews had taken an hour or two, and at the end, she'd only given shows to two of them. Before the others had left, though, she'd had a thought about other roles that needed filled around the station...

Not every idea Sanae had was great, it turned out.

"Okay," Sanae said, crouching down. "So, point the camera at her, like we talked about."

"Uh-huh." Cirno said.

"Now push Record to start taping her."

"Which button's that?"

"It's the one that says 'record' on it...?"

Cirno gave her a blank stare.

"... the red one," Sanae finally explained.

"Gotcha!"

Cirno triumphantly pressed the button. In front of the camera, Hina shuffled a few papers on the desk, then smiled up. "I'm Hina Kagiyama, with Gensokyo Channel One News. Good evening, Gensokyo."

"Good evening!" Cirno shouted back.

Hina stopped, surprised, and Sanae sighed. "Ah, no, no! You have to stay quiet when you're recording people!"

"Oh..." Cirno glanced between Sanae and the camera, frowning thoughtfully. "That doesn't sound very fun."

"Well... not really, but if you say things while it's recording, everybody in Gensokyo can hear you."

Cirno's eyes went wide. "Whoa, that's really loud."

"... never mind," Sanae said. "Let's try to practice it again, and this time, try to be quiet, okay?"

Hiring lesser youkai to operate the station's cameras had _seemed_ like a good idea. Fairies in particular would practically work for free, and with a dozen new shows lined up, it would really be convenient to have somebody else run the camera from time to time. Since it mostly involved standing in one spot and hitting a few buttons, it seemed like it should have been easy enough for even a fairy to manage. _Seemed._

"Should I start over again?" Hina asked.

"Sure. Let's try that again. _Quietly_ this time." Sanae glanced pointedly to Cirno. "Right?"

"I _guess_."

"Good! So, point the camera at her again, and press the button."

Cirno did. Hina held her gaze for a few seconds, waiting to see if she was going to say anything, then took a breath and started over. "Good evening. I'm Hina Kagiyama, with Gensokyo Channel One News. Tonight's top story is the continued—"

This time, it was a different voice that cut Hina off.

"Hey. We're almost down the mountain now. Where's this place we're lookin' for?"

A moment of silence followed before Cirno announced, "It wasn't me that time!" She looked very proud of herself.

"Yeah, I know," Sanae said. "Um..."

The sound of rustling paper followed the voice, followed by a second speaker. "It should be the... the third house on your left. It's a big house, with a little red building by the river."

Sanae followed the noise back to the radio that Nitori and Hatate had brought back from Suzunaan. They'd left it sitting on a desk near the front of the studio, where everybody could hear if it picked anything up. Now, after an entire day of silence, it was finally receiving broadcasts.

"And this place is safe?" the first voice responded.

"Is anywhere safe when you're dealing with humans? You wanted a target, I provided you with a target. The Hakurei shrine maiden doesn't live there, so there's that."

"Don't need your lip, it was just a question."

Cirno had walked over too, and stood up on her tiptoes to glare at the radio. "You're not telling _them_ to shut up."

Sanae ignored her. "This is it! Hina, can you start getting ready for an emergency broadcast? Oh, and Hatate! We need Hatate to write something...!"

* * *

"As far as I know, there are no noteworthy threats. I'm a planner, not a mind reader."

Maeri tossed her radio aside with a huff and flopped back onto her stomach. Even by kappa standards, she was pretty high-strung, and dealing with Touko always got on every last one of her nerves. She never should have signed up for this gig. Before Touko had found her, she and Orisa had been living a peaceful life together, going into the village every now and then to scam enough money to get by. It wasn't a glamorous lifestyle, but it had certain advantages. Like not requiring her to work for a short-tempered megalomaniac and a hand-picked crew of fuckups. There was always that.

Scattered around her were half a dozen maps, bookmark-stuffed notebooks, three pens, a calculator, and an entire pot of coffee. The notebooks and the maps were her pride and joy. Back before she'd ruined her reputation, she'd been the closest thing the kappa had to a project manager. If somebody wanted to build a dam, or wanted to get their hands on half a ton of scrap metal, or needed to know which buildings in the human village could be used to stash some equipment for a few days, they came to her.

By comparison, coordinating Touko's merry band of raiders was child's play. It barely even required any investigation, just a steady stream of isolated houses for them to rob. Early on, she'd tried pointing out that they could make money without the risk of extermination if they just rerouted a river or two and built themselves a hydroelectric dam. Thanks to the Moriyas whetting Youkai mountain's appetite for electricity, power plants were a gold mine these days.

Touko had barely even let her finish the sentence. She wanted to do things her way, and that meant shooting at humans. Stupid. Stupid and reckless. As soon as this was all over, Maeri and Orisa were packing up their things and getting out of here.

For now, though, she pushed the radio aside, then strained to reach the power button on the TV. It flicked on, resuming the program she'd been happily watching before the interruption. It was a movie about a group of humans who had were being stalked through a heavy forest by some kind of youkai with a cloaking device. She had a sneaking suspicion that the viewer was intended to cheer for the humans, but it was kind of hard not to anyway. If the youkai could make a cloaking device, it should have just brought some kind of heavy explosive to take out all the humans at once.

Without ceremony, the screen went black mid-scene. Maeri reached over and gave the TV a firm swat on the side, but nothing changed. "Piece of junk," she sighed. "Can't even have this one nice thing in this dumb cav—"

The screen lit up again, and Maeri trailed off mid-grumbling. Now the broadcast was focused on a black-and-white painted logo in the sign of a radio tower, bobbing slightly as whoever was holding it failed to keep it steady. It lowered from the screen, and a blue-haired fairy jumped up in front of the camera, waving both hands and shouting, "HI, GENSO—!"

A hand gripped the fairy by a shoulder and tugged her aside, cutting her off. The camera was left pointed at a green-haired lady sitting at a desk, wearing an elaborate ribbon-covered outfit. Maeri had to approve of her fashion taste, at least.

"Good evening, Gensokyo. We're sorry to interrupt your, ah..." The announcer faltered and glanced to somebody behind the camera. She mouthed a question. Just loudly enough for the camera to pick it up, somebody hissed back, "Regularly scheduled program!"

"Regularly scheduled program," she repeated, without missing a beat, "for an urgent bulletin. The group known as the Tengu Anti-Human Militia is reported to be active tonight, and are currently believed to be heading for some houses near the base of Youkai Mountain. Humans in the area are advised to stay indoors and be safe."

She glanced off camera again. "Is there anything else I should add?"

Another voice answered her with a gleeful cackle. "That was great! Let's see Aya's dumb paper try to tell people about stuff that hasn't even finished y—"

The video feed cut off. After another few seconds of darkness, the movie resumed.

Maeri kept staring at the TV, like she was expecting to find some answers in it. Her hand patted at the floor until she found her radio. She lifted it to her mouth. "Hey, guys? … guys? Guys, this is important!"

"Can you give me two damn seconds to answer before you have a breakdown?" Touko huffed back. "What is it?"

"I think the TV station people can hear us. They just announced what you're doing on air."

* * *

"I think the TV station people can hear us. They just announced what you're doing on air."

The voice was tinny on the radio, and the last few words were drowned out by Nitori's cackling laughter. "Yeah, we can, dumbass! Didn't you even realize you lost a radio last night?"

"We really scared them, huh?" Hatate said. "Maybe they never took count when they got home."

"Yeah, but... where are they _going_?" Sanae asked.

She'd been silent throughout the end of the news cast. Now, Nitori saw why. She'd been sketching on a scrap of paper. It took her a few seconds to recognize it as a map of Gensokyo. A circle for Youkai mountain, another for the human village, and a loose network of lines to represent the major roads.

"They said they were coming down Youkai Mountain, right?"

"Yeah, sounded like," Nitori said.

"And they were going for the, um, third house on the left?"

"Right."

" _So_ , that means they're on the road, right?" Sanae looked up from the paper with a triumphant grin. "It would be kind of weird to say it's the 'third on the left' unless they're, um, going on some kind of fixed path."

"There are a lot of roads, though," Hina said. "And the youkai have a lot of smaller trails, too."

"Still!" Sanae folded her map up and tucked it in her pocket. "It gives an idea of where they're at!"

"On the road?" Hatate scoffed. "If they are, they really are a bunch of dumb kids. Who ever heard of tengu _walking_ places? Flying's way easier."

Sanae had already left the conversation, though. She had a confident, excited expression that Nitori had learned meant that she was about to announce a plan. "Even if we can't know for sure where they're at, I have to try stopping them! Oh, um, Cirno... you can go home. I don't think we'll have time to practice more today, sorry."

* * *

"I think the TV station people can hear us. They just announced what you're doing on air."

Touko turned her radio off, just in time for it to miss out on a truly impressive string of obscenities from her. She pulled her arm back like she was getting ready to hurl the thing, but decided against it. "Alright!" she said. "Everybody hear that?"

Her accomplices gave a round of stunned nods.

"So the question I'm left wonderin' is, how did a bunch of nobodies at a TV station find our frequency?"

"Maybe a coincidence," Orisa said.

"Yeah, maybe." Touko didn't sound convinced. "Or maybe... everybody pull out your radios, right now. Go on, lemme see 'em."

Orisa and Ririsa grumbled as they dug in their pockets for the radios. Rumi dutifully reached for hers...

and found it missing.

She froze and looked down at herself, then patted her clothes. The tengu disguises had woefully few pockets compared to normal kappa clothing, but she still checked all ten of them. Sure enough, though, they were all empty.

By the time she accepted this fact, everybody else had their radios in hand, and Touko had her affixed on the end of an accusing glare. "So, Rumi, mind telling me where that radio of yours got off to?"

"I don't... um, maybe I left it back at the hideout?"

"Really, now? That's a heck of a coincidence. Your radio just happens to be missin' the same day a few strangers suddenly know what we're up to?"

Rumi whimpered and glanced to the other two for support. They mostly just looked relieved that Rumi was the one on the receiving end of Touko's wrath. "I... might have left it at that store last night?"

"Might've? I'm thinkin' that's a pretty sure bet."

"I'm sorry!" Rumi squeaked. "The fight started, and we were in a hurry to get out, and...!"

Touko cut her off with a raised hand. She was smiling now. On her, the expression fit about as naturally as pants on a snake. "No, no, it's fine, actually. I'm thinking we can use this."

"We can...?"

"Sure can. You brought them bombs, didn't you?"

"The bombs...? Well, they're ready, but I haven't tested them yet, and, um... aren't we going to stop since somebody's coming?"

"Nah. I figure it's the perfect time." Touko hefted her crossbow from her back, idly making adjustments to it and ensuring it was ready for use. "They wanna tell everybody what we're up to? Fine with me. Let's give 'em a show."

* * *

Over the past week, Rumi had gotten used to the nightly raids on human houses. They almost all went the same—they'd storm in, corral the humans into a corner, and one kappa would watch them while the others looted the place. There was rarely any variation to it. Sometimes the humans cried or begged for mercy, but only once had one of them tried fighting back, and Ririsa had subdued her within ten seconds.

Up to a point, tonight was no different.

The house that Maeri had picked out for them was the closest one to the village yet, the residence of Gensokyo's most successful human carpenter. It was a sprawling palace by human standards, and it had more loot than usual. Tools, carvings, even a few lavish scrolls that looked like they'd come from a monastery. There was actually enough worth stealing that they'd stopped to lash it together, making sure that they could haul off as much as possible.

And then, Touko had given the place one last look and announced, "Well, I figure that's good enough. Ririsa, why don't you lead our new friends here outside?"

"You heard her," Ririsa said, gesturing the humans up with her crossbow. "Get moving."

"Nice and easy, of course," Touko warned. "It'd be a real shame if one of you got shot and had to miss the little show we've got planned."

The head of the household, presumably the carpenter, was an overweight middle-aged man. Even when being held hostage by youkai, he'd stayed calm. It made Rumi nervous that he was going to start something, but he only shot them a withering glare as he stood, helping his wife to her feet.

The group walked outside, and Touko directed Rumi and Ririsa to haul their stolen goods to the banks of the river. By the time Rumi returned from doing that, Ririsa had led the humans to a safe distance, in the other direction.

Rumi suspected that she knew why.

"Now then," Touko said. "Let's see this bomb of yours."

"Okay..."

Rumi dug it out from within her robes, and carefully unwrapped the cloth she'd put it in for cushioning. Beneath the wrapping, the bomb wasn't pretty. Her projects called for some weird construction materials sometimes, and this one was no different. It was about the size of a tin can, with its inner workings still on display. A knot of pipes and wires made up the core, with a few circuit boards sticking out at odd angles. One side was covered in blinking LEDs—logically, she knew they shouldn't have done anything, but it seemed to stop working if she removed it. The other side had a chain-driven wheel that seemed to change its speed every few seconds. As she held it up, something inside made a noise like a deflating rubber duck.

Touko inspected it skeptically. "Not much to look at."

"It will work!"

"Sure about that?"

"I'm... well... _almost_ mostly 100% sure. The stuff I build works, but sometimes it doesn't work for very long..."

"... let's just assume it's gonna work. How do you set it off?"

"Oh, well. I don't really know how to make... transmitters and stuff. So, I push a button and ten seconds later, it goes."

"Well then, stick it in the middle of the house n' start it, and I'd run _real_ fast if I was you. Now get to it."

"Right...!" But Rumi didn't go anywhere. "It's just, um," she said, and then faltered under a glare from Touko. For once, she managed to keep going. "Blowing up these people's house doesn't seem very nice."

"Kinda the idea here, yes," Touko replied dryly.

"What I mean is... do we really need to blow it up? We already got their things, and..."

"What, havin' doubts already?"

Rumi had been having doubts for rather longer than that, but Touko didn't sound like she was in the mood for _that_ particular conversation. For one thing, her hand had drifted down to the grip of her crossbow.

"I... I'll go set the bomb."

"Hey, there's a good idea. Why don't you go and do that?"

Rumi ducked her head down in a half-bow, then hurried toward the house. Touko, meanwhile, turned and strode toward the group of humans. Her fake tengu wings bobbed slightly with each step, but she still liked to think that she looked imposing. "Alright, listen up, humans!" She pulled the fan from her belt and raised it into the air, snapping it open. "We're the Tengu Anti-Human Militia! Since it seems like our last few little demonstrations weren't effective, we're just gonna have to send a stronger message."

The entire family was crying apart from the old carpenter, who only glared sullenly at her. Touko certainly wasn't one to let something like that slow her down. "So, tonight, I'm gonna destroy your house with tengu winds. Gotta teach you the power of tengu and all that!"

She looked toward the house just as Rumi scrambled out the front door and toward the river. In her head, she counted down, estimating how much time the bomb had remaining. Then, she gave a forceful downward swipe of her hand, waving the fan toward the house.

A few seconds passed. Nothing happened. Then, a sound like a dozen sizzling pans of bacon, in the bottom of a distant well, rose from around it.

The space around the house warped like the reflection in a puddle, and a subtle blue glow jittered around the edges

The scent of ozone and tar rushed out to fill the air, so heavy that it was palpable. The house shuddered, and began to rise.

One corner was the first to go, prying up from its foundation with the squeal of tortured lumber. That end of the house was left drunkenly bobbing up and down, tugging against its roots, until another one gave out. Something deep inside gave a thunderous crack. Rocks, pebbles, and loose roofing tiles started levitating up into the sky. Finally, with the continued groan of splintering boards and strained supports, the entire house rose off the ground, taking a chunk of the topsoil with it. The stress of being pulled in the entirely wrong direction was too much for the structure, and within seconds, it had cracked in half, its two ends cartwheeling wildly as they rose into the air. Now free, the house rose faster and faster, soon dwindling into a blotch in the night sky.

And then, it reached the apex of its arc and started descending toward the ground.

Touko grinned, and had to force herself to turn away. "Let's get a move-on, girls. Leave these nice people to enjoy the rest of their night."

* * *

The problem with hunting for the tengu at nighttime was that, well, it was nighttime.

Sanae had flown halfway down the mountain before she realized just how many different places she needed to search. There was only one main road up the mountain, but there was no guarantee that these tengu were using it. There were at least a few other small local roads running from youkai settlements on the mountain down into the ravine, and who knew how many other paths that nobody had ever bothered to chart. Searching them all would take a few hours if it was daytime, and now that it was night, unless the tengu were walking down the middle of the road, she wasn't likely to spot them from more than a few meters away.

But she had to do _something_.

She shed altitude, flying down between the two walls of trees that hemmed in the road and following the road. Even with all the options, it still seemed like the best place to look. The tengu had to be heading for another human house, after all, and most of them would be along here. Plus, she'd brought the radio along. If they said anything else that gave their position away, at least being at the foot of the mountain would put her that much closer to them.

The road weaved back and forth once she reached the foothills at the mountain's base, and Sanae rose to fly a straight line across its curves. Past the treetops, in the distance below, she could see most of Gensokyo's central plain, the scattered lights of farmhouses growing more and more dense the closer they got to the human village, a cluster of illumination even this late at night.

She'd only been flying for a few seconds when an explosive clatter of splintering wood pierced the night air. It sounded like it was some distance away, but it was so loud that it echoed back and forth across Gensokyo's central plain, like ripples in a bowl. After a moment of strained listening, she turned and flew off toward the clamor.

* * *

Rumi, like most of the kappa, barely managed to dive back beneath the water's surface before the house landed.

Afterward, she could never quite remember the sequence of events. She could clearly remember the sight of the two halves hitting the ground and bulging outward like overfilled balloons. She could remember the roar as they tore themselves apart. A whirling board slammed into the water barely a few meters away, fountaining droplets into the air. Roofing tiles erupted into the air like a fountain, and doors and wood panels tumbled across the ground. Only after a few seconds did the main bulk of the structure settle down, the few connected pieces of the frame sagging to the ground.

The apocalyptic noise ended as abruptly as it had begun. The activation of Gensokyo's first anti-gravity bomb had finally completed.

"Not bad," Touko said, stepping closer and giving a low whistle. "Not bad at all. Shame we couldn't smash it up even worse, though. Scatter that thing across the countryside and nobody'd stand up to us."

Rumi didn't have a response to that. She turned back toward the shore, looking at the outline of the ruined house. Even at this distance, at night and through the water, she could just make out the shapes of the human family rushing toward the wreckage. She couldn't bring herself to look away until Touko gave her a hearty slap on the back. "Nice as it is, we can't really afford to laze around here enjoyin' the view. Grab the stuff and get moving. I've got some big plans for the next few days." She grinned to Rumi, as she slipped her tengu mask off. "You did good, though, kid."


	7. Chapter 7

The next morning, Sanae had a long flight down to the human village, but the events of the night before were still fresh in her mind.

She'd arrived at the house just a minute too late to catch the culprits. By the time she landed, the building was in ruins, too far gone to salvage without a really inventive miracle. The residents had rushed to her, babbling about the attack through tears. It had taken her a few minutes to calm them down, and even then, they were too frantic for her to get more than the barest details—tengu, stealing, and then the tengu had made their house _fly_.

She'd spent another hour afterward searching for the tengu, but they were nowhere to be found. Wherever they'd gone, she wasn't going to find it by just wandering around.

Sanae only slowly drifted back to the moment as she descended into the human village. The village had a strange air to it today, and the streets were more crowded than usual. It had the slightly frantic feel that she usually associated with festival preparations, but with none of the energetic cheer. Everybody was hurrying from door to door or standing along the street gossiping. Some shops seemed to be closed for the day, while others had lines out the door. Normally, she might stop and make sure that everything was okay. Today, she kept right on walking.

She was headed for Suzunaan, but before she could reach it, the familiar red of Reimu's outfit caught her eye across a crowded square, and next to it, the peak of Marisa's hat. Carefully picking her way closer, she spotted Kosuzu and Akyuu standing alongside the pair. She elbowed her way closer, giving the occasional apology when she bumped into somebody.

"Oh, hey!" Marisa said, before she'd even finished picking her way past the last wall of people. "Don't tell me you're here to get in on this bounty, too."

"Bounty...?"

"Huh? Yeah, you haven't heard?"

Kosuzu turned toward Sanae and smiled. There was a stack of papers clutched to her chest, and before Sanae could ask the obvious question, Kosuzu peeled one from the top and offered it over. "If you could hang a few around your shrine and the station, it would probably be a big help."

The illustration on the paper had started out pretty amateurish to begin with, and being converted to a woodblock print hadn't helped it any. Even so, Sanae could make out the details well enough—it was a group of four people wearing tengu masks, two of them holding crossbows. At the top was printed, 'REWARD OFFERED FOR EXTERMINATION.' At the bottom, in smaller print, were the details on the previous night's attack... and the reward amount.

"Fifty thousand yen?" Sanae said.

"Yep!" Marisa grinned. "It's the best-paying extermination job the village's had in a few years. Me and Reimu are racin' to see who gets it done first."

" _Marisa_ is racing," Reimu corrected her with a sigh. "People are going to complain to me if any more houses get attacked either way, so I'd be doing it even without the reward."

"But the reward helps," Marisa said, smirking to her. After she accepted that the remark hadn't gotten a rise out of Reimu, she glanced to Sanae. "And hey, you've got that radio thing, don't ya?"

"I do... um, how did you know about that?"

"It's all anybody'll talk about. Hearin' about all this on your boxes, I mean."

Kosuzu perked up and nodded excitedly. "People who had televisions learned all about the attacks as soon as they happened last night. Everybody else had to wait until the papers came out this morning. By then, the news had already gotten around, and everybody wanted to know more. We sold out of papers within two hours of getting them in, and half of the customers said they were thinking of buying TVs now."

"Oh! That's great!" Sanae said, with her earlier annoyance temporarily forgotten. "Did the paper say anything else?"

"Not really... Miss Aya was really angry when she delivered them. Half the article was just reminding people that the tengu don't endorse the attacks and want them to stop."

"Right, so, anyway, here's what I'm thinkin'. Sanae," Marisa said. "You let me borrow that radio thing, and we'll split the reward fifty-fifty."

"Ah, that radio is the private property of the Gensokyo Television Station!" Sanae grinned and leaned closer. "If you want to hear updates about it, though, you can buy a television! We announce anything we hear on there."

"Sometimes I'm not sure if you're a shrine maiden or a businesswoman," Reimu said.

"Look who's talking," Akyuu said dryly. "In any case, at this rate, you can include the villagers in the race for the bounty."

"Huh?" Sanae said. "What do you mean?"

"Have you spent much time in the village today?"

"Nope! I just got here. … is something wrong?"

"Everybody is worried. There are always rumors of youkai attacking farmhouses or eating people, but everybody is used to those, and adults remember the days when that sort of thing still regularly happened. Youkai destroying houses is harder to ignore, though."

Kosuzu nodded. "I heard that the blacksmith had a line around the building this morning, and he'd sold out of weapons by noon..."

"Oh." Sanae glanced over the crowd around them. It was true. It had that energetic atmosphere she'd felt before, but the energy driving it was tension, not excitement. Here and there throughout the crowd, she could hear voices raised in argument. She was pretty sure that she saw a few weapons poking up, too. "... people aren't going to do anything, are they?"

"This always happens," Reimu reassured her with a sigh. "Whenever youkai start acting up, everybody suddenly wants a sword. Never mind that a sword will barely slow down anything worse than a fairy."

"I mean, not a normal one," Marisa said. "There's ways to make them work for that kind of thing, but you've gotta know the right enchantments, and..." Realizing that nobody else was interested in the line of conversation, she trailed off.

"Reimu is right," Akyuu said. "This happens every time there's an incident that affects the village. People will get more suspicious of youkai for a while, but once it blows over, things will go back to normal."

"Unless something even worse happens," Reimu pointed out.

"That's why we've raised fifty thousand yen to convince the best youkai hunters in Gensokyo to focus on the issue," Akyuu said, coolly.

"A-ah, well." Sanae glanced between them uneasily. Kosuzu looked a lot more worried than Akyuu, but even the usually-calm Child of Miare's face betrayed some anxiety. She straightened herself up and forced a smile. "Well, you don't need to worry anymore! The Moriya shrine maiden is on the case!"

"I bet those youkai will surrender as soon as they hear that all three of you are looking for them!" Kosuzu beamed up at her, looking immensely relieved. "So did you come down on business? I can head back to Suzunaan, if you need to talk."

"Oh! That's right." In the conversation, Sanae had almost forgotten about the actual reason for her visit. She pulled her own stack of papers out from beneath her arm and offered it over. "I just came to deliver these."

Kosuzu took the paper and glanced over them, adjusting her glasses.

"They're schedules," Sanae explained. "For the station. We have a bunch of new shows coming up starring Gensokyo residents, so I thought it would be nice for people to have a better idea of when things air."

"Oh. That should be helpful, yes!"

"Tomorrow is the first one, too! We have a minor goddess hosting an advice show."

"An advice show...?"

"It's a show where people send in their problems, and the host tries to give them advice on how to deal with them. I was kind of hoping that you could gather up letters from people here, and we could carry them back up to the station when we make deliveries. I know it's kind of short notice, but..."

"I'll be sure to mention it!" Kosuzu promised.

"Which goddess?" Akyuu asked.

"Oh, um, it's Hina Kagiyama. She's been doing our news broadcasts!"

"Taking advice from a goddess of misfortune sounds like a real bad idea," Marisa said.

"She really means well! And I'll be putting up some really strong wards around the studio to keep her powers in check."

"So you aren't just using it to promote your own goddesses' faith?" Reimu asked.

"Huh? Nope. We're offering shows to anybody who can come up with an interesting concept."

"Huh. Something like that could probably do a lot to increase visitors to my shrine, if it caught on..."

"For a good enough show idea, I might let even a _rival shrine_ have one. Marisa, that goes for you too! We need everything we can get!"

The rest of the visit was over quickly, with just a bit more discussion of business with Kosuzu. By the time that Sanae said her goodbyes, the crowd had started to thin out, but the uneasy mood still filled the village.

* * *

The inside of the station was starting to feel like an actual business these days. When Sanae stepped into the front room, two of the youkai she'd given shows to were hanging around, arguing over their competing concepts. In the studio, Hina was pacing back and forth, reading a handwritten news article to herself, mumbling different enunciations to herself. In the back room, Nitori was sitting on her mattress, with tidy rows of TV components laid out in front of her as she produced more of them.

It was just as well that everybody else was busy. Sanae wasn't in much of a socializing mood. She settled down at her desk with a draft of the Sunday schedule in front of her to make some tweaks, and before she knew it, ten minutes had passed and she hadn't gotten anything done.

She clicked her pen. She doodled on her paper. She did everything except actually accomplish something.

She couldn't stop thinking about the night before.

* * *

Normally, kappa would be very reluctant to walk very far through an open, grassy field, but calling their current surroundings a 'grassy field' was a criminal understatement. It had been an expansive rice field at some point, but it had been untended for years. Now, other plants had moved in to fill the opening, making a solid wall of foliage that reached two meters into the air. Maeri, as the one with all the maps, led the way, huffing indignantly and swatting plants out of her way. The others followed in a single file line behind her, taking advantage of the path she was clearing.

" _There_ ," she said, once they'd been walking for what felt like an hour. "This is the place."

Rumi couldn't even see anything except more grass at first. Not until she'd pushed her way through another five meters of it was she finally able to see their destination. In the middle of a much less wild clearing, a house stood. It had clearly seen better days, with some of its panels ajar, ivy growing up one corner, and years of detritus strewn across its roof, but it was still more or less in one piece.

The kappa filed into the clearing and laid down their loads—tools, cleaning supplies, even a few pieces of lumber. Touko stepped forward, looking the place over. "You're sure this place is abandoned, Maeri?"

"Unless there are squatters or something. I can't be a hundred percent sure about that kind of thing, but... if there's nobody inside, we should be able to use it?"

"Ririsa, go take a look." Once Ririsa was underway, Touko turned to the rest of the group. "There, listen up! We've got until tonight to get this place cleaned up and make it look like someone lives here. Orisa, you and me will do the cleanin'. Maeri, you can make repairs, and Ririsa will start settin' our trap."

"Huh..." Rumi looked over the house. "... what about me?"

"Isn't it obvious? You've got the most important part. You're gonna be gettin' that bomb of yours ready for our new friends."

* * *

Nitori had a problem.

Or, well, Sanae had a problem, and by extension, it was also Nitori's problem. Nitori was sitting in the maintenance room, but the door was still open, and from her spot on the floor, she could see most of the studio. She could see the mixing desk, where Sanae was hunched over in her chair, halfheartedly shuffling papers and occasionally jotting a quick note on one. She was close enough to hear the deep sighs Sanae gave now and then.

She tried to ignore them. Getting involved in other people's problems wasn't really the kappa way, and that went double when those problems were emotional. If it was a sensible issue, like getting the timing on an engine right, you could at least expect that the other person would try to reciprocate sooner or later. Reciprocating emotions, on the other hand, was a messy and complicated affair, far worse than even the most daunting engineering project. It wasn't something to enter into lightly.

So, Nitori focused on her work for the day, making another batch of TVs. By this stage, she'd already made the components, and just needed to slide them together into their final state. Four pieces to snap together, one wire bundle to connect, four screws to put the internal assembly together, four more screws to close the casing around it, one knob to snap on, stick the antenna on, slide a battery in, and hit the power button to test it. Easy. It was meditative, in a way. _Snap snap screw screw screw screw snap slide_ and one was practically done. Straightforward, like other things regrettably weren't.

But she still found herself glancing toward Sanae now and then as she worked.

It took most of twenty minutes for her to work up the nerve to approach her. "Hey, uh, Sanae?"

Sanae had given up on even pretending to work. She was staring vacantly down at the paper, with her pen tapping anxiously at the table. Whatever she was worried about, she was so preoccupied that she barely noticed Nitori's presence until she spoke. "Huh?"

"So, I've been thinking..." Nitori glanced aside and tucked her thumbs into two of her many, many belt loops. She liked to think it looked like a casual posture. "You've come in every single day since we started the station, right?"

"Huh? Um, yeah, I guess I have."

"So, don't humans usually get a day or two a week off?"

"Oh. Well, usually, I guess..."

"You should do that, then."

"Huh? Well, I mean, I could, but... there's a lot of stuff I should get done today, and then tomorrow we start airing the new shows, and those don't finish until—"

"Remember when you made me take a break the other day? I'm doing that now. I didn't say you get a a choice here." Nitori leaned in, smirking. "I still own this place, and even though you might be the manager, that means I get to make a few rules. And, uh, anyway..." She glanced down at the paper in front of Sanae. She didn't know what it had looked like before, but she did know that the hash marks and stars that Sanae had doodled all over it probably weren't the intended contents. "... you don't look like you're in a state to get much done today anyway."

Sanae followed her gaze down to the paper and flinched. "A-ah, sorry. I'm just a little distracted, is all."

Nitori found herself really wanting to ask, ' _about what?_ ,' but managed to stifle the urge. She knew how to act like a disinterested jerk. She wasn't sure if her repertoire extended to 'concerned friend.'

"Well, see. After you relax and stuff, you'll be a lot less distracted, too. Come on. Get up, out the door. If you're still here in ten minutes, I'm firing you."

Sanae gave a hesitant nod, and Nitori wondered just how much of this she was buying. It was enough to get her out of her seat, at least. "Well... okay then. But I'm supposed to stop by Kourindou and get the camcorder Sumireko's buying for us—"

"I can do that."

"—and give the fairies more lessons on running the cameras—"

"I can do that, too." Internally, Nitori winced. When fairies were involved, even the simplest task took twice as long and was four times as annoying.

"—and I really need to start drawing up a budget so we know how much money we have to work with when the TVs stop selling so fast..."

"And that one can wait." No way Nitori was touching a budget in a million years. That sort of thing was why she'd hired Sanae in the first place. "... seriously, you look like a mess. If you're really serious about doing more stuff today, at least go take care of whatever's bothering you first."

"I guess a few hours wouldn't hurt..." Sanae still didn't seem to be in a rush to leave. "Could I take Hatate with me too?"

Hatate had been sitting at the news desk, facing away from the two and randomly looking up pictures on her camera with her thoughtography. Now, out of the corner of her eye, Nitori noticed her stiffen up. So she'd been eavesdropping. That would be good to keep in mind for the future. "Hatate? Er, well. It's her call, I guess. I don't need her for anything."

Hatate kept on trying to pretend that she was ignoring the two, but even she seemed able to sense the two pairs of eyes on her back. Begrudgingly, she asked, "What do you need?"

* * *

'Other tengu sources,' Sanae had asked for.

She'd looked so hopeful. Hatate hadn't had the heart to tell her that she didn't _have_ any tengu sources. None of the papers really reported on events within the tengu village. What was the point? Any tengu reading it would already know what was happening, and the Great Tengu only paid for juicy news on the other races. A waste of time, that's what it was.

Sanae had also added, 'or any other tengu friends you have might be fine!' Hatate hadn't yet found a way to retain her pride while admitting her number of friends.

What she did have, though, were acquaintances and co-workers. So, she'd led Sanae on a long flight around the mountain, a kilometer or two below where the springs joined together into a roaring river. A bridge came into view, and a single figure on it, standing rigidly.

Hatate just hoped that Momiji was on duty today, and not one of the other wolf tengu. A few of them had gotten so annoyed at Aya that they snapped at crows on general principle.

She was in luck, though. Momiji didn't turn as the two landed, but that was the easiest way to know it was her. Nobody else was _so_ dedicated to standing guard that they wouldn't even glance aside for a moment. "Good afternoon, Hatate," she said, before they'd even finished settling down.

"Good afternoon. Er, how'd you know it was me, th—"

"Smell."

"... right. Uh, so, anyway, this is Sanae Kochiya, from the shrine up on the mountain?"

"We've met, yes." In a rare break of her vigilance, Momiji turned from the mountainside to give Sanae a nod of acknowledgment. "What can I do for you?"

Sanae didn't immediately answer, and Hatate realized that she was the one leading this conversation. "Sanae was wanting to ask you about, you know, all the robberies or whatever that have been happening down there. Oh! And the house last night."

"The Tengu Anti-Human Militia?"

"Right. That stuff."

Momiji gave a nod of understanding. "I don't know much, but I'll answer what I can."

Hatate glanced to Sanae, desperately hoping that she'd pick up their end of things. This was already in the running for the second-longest conversation she'd had today.

Fortunately, Sanae came through. "Right! So, um, I'd just been thinking... You have really good eyesight, right?"

"I do, yes."

"Do you ever stand guard at night?"

"I cover a twelve-hour shift from noon to midnight three days a week. To answer your next question, yes, I was on duty when the attack happened last night."

"I guess that means you didn't see any tengu leave the mountain around then?"

"I didn't. The only tengu moving around were patrols and normal foot traffic. The only tengu that I saw leave the mountain was Aya."

"Hmm... are you sure it was Aya? It couldn't have been anybody else in a disguise or anything?"

Momiji glanced over again. She gave an expression that Hatate had always figured was meant to be a smile, but it was uncomfortably toothy for the tastes of anybody who wasn't a wolf. "It was Aya," she said. "Also, the top button of her jacket was unbuttoned, she hadn't brushed her hair, and there were two rolls of film inside her top-left pocket."

She held Sanae's gaze for a moment, challenging. Sanae blanched. Momiji turned back, looking satisfied.

"A-ah, right, so nobody left but Aya, got it."

"I wouldn't be surprised if Aya was the one smashing houses just to drum up more news," Hatate muttered.

"She didn't head down until afterward," Momiji said.

Hatate muttered under her breath anyway.

Sanae was deep in thought, and the back-and-forth seemed to pass over her head. "That doesn't make sense, though. If no tengu left the mountain, how could any of them attack the humans?"

"I didn't say that nobody left. I just said that I didn't see them. They could have descended on the other side of the mountain." Momiji gestured toward the mountainside below them. "The mountain is covered by trees, too. There are plenty of routes down that aren't visible from here. There are caves up and down the mountainside, and the kappa have built tunnels apart from that. There are plenty of ways to get down the mountain without being seen if you really want to."

Sanae didn't look pleased at that news, but it seemed that she'd learned better than to challenge Momiji's eyesight again. "Right..." she said, and sighed. "So we really can't say much about who it is or how they're getting down there..."

"I'm afraid not."

Momiji's eyes settled onto a point in the distance below, and she went silent. Hatate belatedly realized that she should have been recording the entire conversation for the news, and fumbled a notebook out of her pocket to start jotting notes. Sanae fell into deep thought.

Momiji was the one to break the silence. "More than likely, you're looking in the wrong place."

"Huh?" Sanae looked up from contemplation. "How do you mean?"

"The tengu village is pretty close-knit," Momiji said. Her eyes flitted briefly toward Hatate before she added, "... mostly. If somebody were sneaking out every night, one of the village's sentinels would have noticed by now. This is probably being caused by a group of bandits."

"You have those...?"

"From time to time. When everything is peaceful, there's nowhere for the younger warriors to experience actual battle, so it's fairly common for small groups of them to become bandits. They spend a few decades raiding human monasteries and settlements. Sooner or later, they get bored and settle down."

"Oh, right. Hatate mentioned that!"

"Like I said, dumb kids," Hatate said.

"So if they're rebels, I guess they'd be hiding pretty well, right?"

"They would. They're causing a lot of problems for us right now. I personally volunteered to deal with them once we find them, but there's already a queue of applicants."

"Hmm... so they're probably in a hidden camp, and they're sneaking through the forest or something." Sanae gave a firm nod. "Got it! Thanks! I guess it isn't a lot to go off of, but it's better than nothing."

"It's my pleasure," Momiji said. "If you do find them, I'm sure the tengu would be grateful."

"Oh, yeah, it'd be a huge favor," Hatate added, not wanting to feel left out.

"Right..." Sanae spent a few more seconds considering that, then said, "Thanks again for your help! Hatate, I think I've got a few more places I'd like to check out, if you don't mind."

"Sure," Hatate said. "Lead the way."

* * *

Sanae had only intended to search a few places when she'd led Hatate from the bridge, but the list had just kept snowballing. They'd flown over kilometers of forest, searching for any habitations larger than the occasional youkai shack. They'd checked out a few caves, and quickly retreated when most of them got too dark to see. They'd scouted along the mountainside for good paths to sneak down. As nighttime approached, they'd stood along one of the ridges, looking out over the slope for any fires or other signs of camps.

Nothing. In hour after hour of searching, they didn't manage to find a single clue about where an entire group of tengu could be camping out. Sanae had never realized just how big a mountain was before.

Just as she'd been getting ready to give up and return to the station, the radio crackled. "Alright, where're we attacking tonight?"

"Eh?" Hatate looked up from her camera. She'd long ago given up on finding the tengu, and started using it to look for newsworthy stories elsewhere. "Was that them?"

"It sounded like it!" Sanae cranked the radio's volume as high as it would go and waited.

She wasn't waiting long. A second voice answered the first one. "It's an old farmhouse, in the middle of an overgrown field about half a kilometer south of the main road into the village. There's a big tree in the yard, you can't miss it."

"Great. We'll be there in about twenty minutes."

The radios clicked as they went silent, and Sanae's smile just kept growing. "This is great! With that much information, I bet I could find the place before they even leave!"

"Yep! Super convenient, huh?" Hatate closed her camera. "Should I head back to the station and do a story about it?"

"Of course!" Sanae grinned. "Just don't take too long, or I might have already beaten them by the time you finished."

* * *

Maeri flicked her radio off with a sigh. "Are you really sure this is going to work?"

"'course it will," Touko said. "These TV people are already tellin' everyone our plans. You really think nobody's gonna think to try stoppin' an honest-to-goodness attack by wicked tengu? If we get real lucky, it'll be someone from that TV station."

The kappa had retreated half a kilometer to a small hillside. It had enough foliage for them to hide in as they waited, and better yet, it offered a nice view of the house from above. After getting most of a day's labor from five kappa, the place was barely recognizable anymore. It looked occupied, patched up and clean. They'd even had time to trim the yard around it just to help sell the illusion.

More importantly, they'd made some much less obvious tweaks to turn it into their perfect trap.

Ririsa had a cobbled-together control panel in front of her, little more than a box with a few switches on it, with hastily-applied labels that read 'WINDOWS,' 'DOOR,' and 'ABORT.' She didn't look up from working on it as she spoke. "The thing I'm wondering about is, is this really necessary?"

"It does seem a little... overreacting," Maeri agreed, shooting a cautious glance toward Touko as she spoke. "If you want to stop them from eavesdropping on us, we could easily switch to a different frequency or use encryption."

"See, now, it ain't about the radio," Touko said. "It's about sendin' a message. All it takes is one human pokin' around in our business to bring this whole thing down, and we're gonna make sure that don't happen."

"If you don't want humans 'poking around in our business,' trying to kill one might not be a very good decision. We can—"

"Anybody who crosses me has to learn there's a price you pay." Touko's voice held an edge, and it wasn't entirely clear if she was talking about _just_ humans.

The conversation died, and Rumi's attention returned to her own device. Hers was rather simpler than Ririsa's, a single hand-held switch to trigger her antigravity bomb. Maeri had rigged it for remote detonation with ten minutes of effort. She sort of hoped it wouldn't actually work, though. When she was wrecking houses to work toward paying off her debt, she could tell herself that it was justified. Trying to smush a shrine maiden who'd gotten on Touko's bad side... that was a bit harder.

"There," Orisa said, breaking the silence.

Every eye turned back toward the house. Just visible at this distance was the little white blob of a uniform, descending toward the house. The interloper landed next to the house and walked around it twice. She cracked the door and peered inside. She stepped in the front door.

"Touko," Maeri said urgently. "That was a shrine maiden. We can't—"

"Quiet." Touko turned to Ririsa, grinning. "Told you it'd work. Hit the trap."

* * *

Sanae had found the house easily, at least. Making sense of what she found was a bit less easy. It was pretty obviously the one that the tengu had been talking about over the radio, but it didn't seem to be under attack. She could hear sounds coming from within, but nobody answered her shouts.

She circled the place twice, looking for any other signs of life, and found none. The place didn't have a garden, let alone any cultivated farmland, and the few objects scattered around the yard looked like they'd been subjected to years of outdoor weather.

And yet, sounds still came from within.

"Hello?" Sanae cracked the front door open and peered inside. The place smelled weird, like a mix of mildew and cleaning supplies. Kind of similar to how the radio station had smelled that first day. There was furniture filling the front room, though, and with the door open, she could more clearly hear the noises coming from within. They were conversation, just too low for her to make out the words. "Hello? I don't want to make you worried, but I think some tengu are going to attack this place soon!"

There was no response, but the conversation continued. Sanae hesitated for a moment, then mumbled an apology, then pushed her way through the door. The place wasn't big, but as she progressed, it became increasingly clear that something was strange here. The house didn't have much furniture, and what little it held had all been moved to the front room, leaving the others empty. The conversation she was hearing became more clearly artificial as she got closer, too.

She turned a corner and found the source. There, in a room all the way at the back of the house, a television was sitting, turned on.

Sanae frowned at the TV in confusion, but her thoughts were interrupted by a series of sharp _clack_ s that echoed throughout the house. The radio in her hand let out a burst of static as it spoke again. "Hey. Are you people from that TV place listenin'?"

Sanae froze mid-step, slowly raising the radio. It felt like even breathing might give too much away.

"C'mon, I know you're out there. You didn't exactly make it secret you were listening in on us last night, you know. You know how to use a radio, right? You just hit that button and talk to me."

Sanae fumbled with the radio until she found the button. "I am... Who is this? Who are you?"

As she spoke, she hurried back toward the front of the house. Every window's shutters had been drawn closed, as had the door, and the only light shined in through the cracks around them. She made her way to the door and gave it a tug, but it didn't budge. It was a sliding one, made of sturdy wood, and on one side, she could now see two slim metal rods hold it in place, leading back to a box built into the wall. The whole assembly was made of suspiciously newer material than the rest of the house.

"Never you mind that. Am I talking to that kappa, or...?"

"Er. I'm... a human. This is Sanae Kochiya, of the Moriya shrine! … and, er, the Gensokyo Television Station. Why are you talking to me now...?"

"A shrine maiden works _at_ the TV station...?" There were a few seconds of muffled cursing on the other end of the radio before the speaker recovered. "Look, point is, we noticed that last night, you were tryin' to tell all of Gensokyo what we were up to. Me and the girls don't really appreciate that kinda thing. Makes us feel like you might get in our way. So, I thought we'd dedicate tonight's little show to you."

"What are you talking about?! Are you the ones who did this to this house?"

"That's right. Let's call it a little gift from me to you."

"I don't know what you're talking about, but if you want to settle this, meet me somewhere and we'll have a spell card duel!"

The voice on the other end chuckled. "That kinda thing ain't really my speed. This? This is a whole lot easier, in my book." There was a brief, muffled conversation on the other end of the radio. "Good luck, shrine maiden."

The radio went silent with a click.

Sanae stared at it for a moment, but whatever that was supposed to mean, it didn't sound promising. She clipped the radio to her skirt again and pounded on the door, but it wasn't going to budge. She tugged on the casing of the mysterious box that was keeping it sealed, but it was seamless and solid. She drew back her hand to try punching it...

and a sound like a dozen sizzling pans of bacon, in the bottom of a distant well, shook the air around her. It was accompanied by a strange feeling, like firecrackers going off in the air around her.

The space around her warped like the reflection in a puddle, and a subtle blue glow shined through the cracks around the shutters.

The scent of ozone and tar rushed out to fill the air, so heavy that it was palpable. And, Sanae floated upward, suddenly untethered from the ground.

"A-aaaah! What the heck is going on?!" She flailed around in the air for a moment before asserting her flying skills, bringing herself to a stop. The entire house was groaning and creaking, making a sound like a dying whale, and it was just getting louder. Soon, it was rattling and shuddering, threatening to rip itself apart, while the wind howled around it and whistled in the cracks. What little she could glimpse through the cracks soon explained everything—the ground was rapidly retreating beneath her.

The house was flying. And, presumably, like the one last night, it was going to fall at some point.

"H-hey! Let me out of here!" Sanae floated up to a beam on the ceiling and used it as leverage to brace herself and kick a window. A few sharp blows were enough to rattle it, but it didn't budge.

An immense moan rose from the house's frame, as it was subjected to forces that no building was ever built to withstand. Somewhere on the other side of the building, something snapped with an ear-stabbing noise. The entire house leapt in the air, sending furniture ricocheting around the room, and Sanae was thrown against the ceiling. Only some quick braking with her flight saved her from a broken rib.

It was followed by another jolt, though. A rogue table cartwheeled across the room, ricocheting from floor to ceiling under the apparent zero-G, and Sanae only barely dodged it.

The whole house was shaking constantly now, like the worst earthquake she'd ever felt. Another sharp crack sounded, and then, one of the beams holding up the roof splintered. The roof collapsed along one side, and the angry wind poured in.

It was the strongest wind Sanae had ever felt, like a typhoon gone mad. It immediately slammed her against the wall, while throwing the contents of the room around. The added drag made the house start rotating in the air, until she could see the ground through the hole in the ceiling. With another few snaps, a portion of the wall ripped away, flying off toward the ground so quickly that she didn't even see it move.

The wind was weakening now, though. The house groaned as it approached the apex of its flight. All the furniture levitated into the air, suddenly free of both gravity and wind. And then, it began falling again.

Sanae kicked off the wall, flying off toward the hole, and almost made it before the descending house caught up to her. It was upside-down now, and the floor smashed into her with enough force to nearly knock the wind out of her lungs. As the house accelerated, the wind picked up strength again, whipping through her hair and making her eyes water, making it hard to move.

She could see the ground approaching below, and while it felt like she'd been flying upward for ages, she could practically count the seconds until impact. She was running out of time. Even if she could personally fly, she wasn't sure that being inside a house as it smashed against the ground would be good for her.

"Alright, alright, um...!"

Normal brute force wasn't going to save her. A miracle might, but she didn't have time to prepare a miracle. It didn't leave many options.

Sanae took a deep breath, doing her best to focus despite the circumstances, and called on her abilities. The goddesses' power flowed into her, still carrying the warm, distant feeling of their presence. She knew she didn't have much time, but she was only going to get once shot at this. She lingered, gathering as much power as she could for a single, decisive blow.

Sanae could form energy into phantasmal snakes or frogs, or simple rays or bullets. Today, she released it in a single, forceful sphere, a shockwave expanding out from her.

She didn't see much of the aftermath. Even with the house falling at dozens of meters per second, her attack was far faster. It ripped the walls and floor apart, like a bursting balloon. Horrible shrieks of wood filled the air, drowning out even the wind. Wood and furniture and splinters whirled around her in an angry mess, and Sanae shrunk down to avoid the worst of it. A few chunks of debris smacked against her body on the way down, followed by a rush of wind as the bulk of the house fell past

And then, it was over.

She drew to a stop, hovering in mid-air, and barely a second later, the world was filled with the strange sound of the house smashing into the ground. It was over. Everything went quiet, apart from the sound of Sanae wheezing for air and her heart pounding in her chest. She was still dozens of meters in the air, high enough to see the entire scene beneath her. Pieces of the house were tumbling across the ground for quite some time. She was just happy not to be among the debris.

Her head hadn't even stopped spinning by the time the radio spoke again. "You lived, did ya? Well, I can work with that, too. Just keep in mind what happens when you mess with us. Now, tomorrow, I'm gonna call you up again, with a little personal favor I want some help with. If you don't answer, or you try anything funny, well..." The voice gave a dark chuckle. "I reckon I can find some ways to make you regret it, don't you?"

The radio went silent with a click.

* * *

Touko was still grinning as she clipped the radio back to her belt. "That oughta give her something to think about."

"Mostly makes me think about the fact that we just pissed off a girl who can apparently rip apart buildings," Ririsa said.

"And she's a shrine maiden, you know," Maeri said. With the kappa occupied with physical labor all day, she'd worn a normal uniform like the rest of them, and looked very grumpy to lack her usual quota of frills. She sat up and brushed her knees off. "After pulling a stunt like that... I don't think anybody would protest too much if she tried to exterminate us. We really shouldn't push her any more."

"Nah, I think she's learned her lesson."

"You're crazy," Orisa muttered.

Touko shot her a dark look, but didn't have time to deal with it just yet. "If you're so scared of that girl, then let's get movin' before she thinks to look for us. Back to the river, quick."

Maeri looked like she wanted to push the issue, but let it slide with a sigh. "Got it, boss."

Rumi wasn't far behind. Like Maeri, she didn't relax until she was safe underwater again, the surface of the river roiling a meter over her head. She lowered her head as she pushed against the current, heading back up the mountain.

Another house tonight. That was two houses they'd destroyed, and now an attempted murder. Two houses, and she was barely any closer to paying her debts. Two houses, and it was getting harder and harder to convince herself that any of this was justifiable. Eating humans to survive was one thing, but this was just unnecessarily cruel, and Touko seemed to be enjoying herself a bit too much for Rumi to convince herself that this was all purely necessary.

And tomorrow, they'd go for the village, committing sins that dwarfed everything they'd done so far.

Rumi wanted out.


	8. Chapter 8

Rumi had been up half the night, planning her escape.

The most important part was packing. She'd already finished making all the anti-gravity bombs that Touko wanted, and there was no way she was leaving them behind. That, she wasn't budging on. If she was leaving, the bombs were coming with her, and Touko wouldn't be launching any more houses into the clouds. It was easier said than done, though. Combined, the bombs mostly filled even a hefty kappa backpack, leaving her only a few smaller pockets for other supplies. She obsessed over what to put into these, and settled onto the bare necessities—her last bag of peppermints, her cut of the stolen money, her notebook, a pen, a handful of the more valuable small items they'd stolen, and a few spare crossbow bolts.

She was bringing the crossbow, of course. She barely knew how to use it, but it paid to look scary.

Her much bigger problem was actually sneaking out. There were two issues.

The first was getting out unseen. Touko had gotten the group onto a pretty regular schedule for kappa, but a regular schedule by kappa standards still wasn't very predictable. Even now that they'd wasted the television as bait in the now-ruined house yesterday, there would probably be one or two of them in the main room at any given time, tinkering with projects or chatting. Right now, in the early morning, was her best chance of sneaking out without any of them noticing... and she really didn't want to know what would happen if they noticed her.

It did mean that sneaking out the main entrance to the hideout wasn't an option, since it was only accessible through the main room. There was another path, though. The cave stretched down into the mountainside, snaking off into darkness. The kappa weren't using it past a certain point, and Touko hadn't said anything about what was down there. Rumi was just going to have to hope that it linked up to one of the many other caves in the foothills of Youkai Mountain.

The other problem was Robo. He didn't bark much, but a dog his size wasn't very sneaky to begin with, and he wasn't obedient. She was pretty sure he'd follow her, but only just. He didn't seem very bright. Sometimes he'd fixate on something he'd never noticed before, like a rock along the path or his own tail, and he'd refuse to budge until he'd sniffed it for ten minutes.

To help motivate him, she'd snuck a few fish out of the icebox. It would just have to do.

As soon as she had made up her mind and double-checked her supplies, Rumi popped a mint into her mouth, took a deep breath, gave a resolute nod, and took off into the unexplored tunnels.

The lights from the hideout faded away within a dozen steps, so she flipped to her flashlight finger and used it to light her path. Most of the caves in Youkai Mountain were pretty featureless, and this one was no exception—there were some lumpy stalactites and stalagmites, but nothing noteworthy. A path had even been worn down the middle of it from millennia of use by youkai. Robo didn't seem interested in the path, which probably meant that she was the first one who had come this way in a while. Robo was very vigilant about sniffing anything out of the ordinary. It was practically his only skill.

After a few minutes of walking, Rumi hadn't seen a hint of daylight or escape. Not even a fork in the tunnel or anything. Simply a long, stone corridor, leading her ever deeper.

The exploration was dull enough that she started to drift off, considering exactly how she was going to re-establish herself once she'd cut ties with the band of rebels. She still wasn't welcome back in kappa society, and she really didn't want to go back to living alone on the edge of the river. Briefly, she considered going back and grabbing her tengu disguise, but it seemed like it might be kind of hard to convince an actual tengu that she was the genuine article. For one thing, she had no idea if tengu ever had pet dogs. It'd be kind of weird, since some of them basically _were_ dogs.

Rumi was so wrapped up in these considerations that she didn't even notice the tripwire until her foot pushed it aside, triggering a mechanical _clunk_ from the darkness.

Fire lashed out at her.

* * *

"Oh, the letters? We actually got some! One second..." Kosuzu crouched down behind her desk, rummaging around before pulling out a small stack of paper. She rifled through them, checking the contents, then straightened up to offer them over with a smile. "We only got a few, though. I hope that won't be a problem."

"Oh, no, that's fine!" Hina shuffled through the letters, and only reluctantly tore her attention away after skimming a few of them. These were humans' heartfelt requests for help, after all. The only differences between these and prayers were academic, and as a goddess, Hina was determined to give them all the serious consideration they deserved. "We thought this might happen, so we've been gathering some from employees at the station, too. Thank you very much."

She bowed, and after saying some goodbyes, made her way out of Suzunaan. It was still fairly early in the morning, but she liked it that way. The village was busy, with people hurrying around on errands and to wherever they were spending the day. It meant that most of them were wrapped up in their own worlds, hopefully too busy to notice a lone misfortune goddess among them.

They weren't, of course. She counted five stares before she made it to the corner. But it was nice to hope.

As she crossed a crowded square, one of the last obstacles between her and the long road up to the peak of Youkai Mountain, she became aware of a particularly persistent set of eyes. There, among the crowds, a young woman was staring intently at her. Hina averted her gaze and lowered her eyes. She'd been in this situation dozens of times before. The best approach in these circumstances was to keep to herself and hurry onward. If she was lucky, nobody would choose to make a scene. The last thing she needed this morning was to get chased out of town on accusations of making somebody's child fall ill or something.

Her shadow wasn't giving up so easily, though. Even as she picked her way across the square, Hina could feel those eyes on the back of her head the whole time. She sped up, hoping to at least get out of the crowd before she was confronted, but no luck. She could hear the footsteps approaching behind her now, and—

"Excuse me?"

Hina pretended she hadn't heard the voice and kept moving.

"Excuse me, miss? With the green hair?"

It was harder to shrug that off. There weren't exactly a lot of people in the village with green hair. Hina stiffened up for a moment, then drooped and sighed. "I'm very sorry if something unfortunate has happened to you today. I'm leaving, though, don't worry."

"Huh?" The woman drew closer, stepping around to get a better look at her, then perked up. "I was right! You're that lady from the talking box!"

"I am? Er, well, yes, I am, but..."

"I knew it was you! I almost didn't recognize you at first, because I'm used to you being _this_ tall—" The woman mimed a very tiny Hina with her hands. "—but your hair is hard to miss!"

"A-ah, so it is."

"I'm real glad I was able to bump into you. My mother can't read the newspaper anymore, because her eyes are too bad, but she can hear that show of yours just fine. I really can't thank you enough."

It took a moment for Hina's mind to make sense out of the words she was hearing. "... thank me?"

"Well, of course. Time was, she barely had any reason to get out of bed, but now she's in the front room every evening, waiting to hear the news. It's all she'll talk about!"

"And you aren't... afraid of me?"

"Huh? No, why would I be? She's going to be excited just hearing that I met you!"

"A-ah..." Hina smiled, but the world blurred as her eyes filled with tears. "I'm happy to be of service."

* * *

"Heeeey, Sanae. Your food isn't going to eat itself if you just stare at it, you know."

Suwako's voice snapped Sanae back to the moment, and she realized, too late, that she'd been staring at her breakfast for a few minutes. She glanced up and found both goddesses looking at her with concern. On the floor off to the side, the shrine's own television was muted and playing the tail end of some movie. The fact that she'd been zoned out for so long that she couldn't even remember what movie it was was probably a bad sign.

After a startled jolt, Sanae hurried back into action, shoving a few bites of food into her mouth to make up for lost time. "A-ah, sorry, I was just distracted, is all...!"

It had been quite a night. After her ride in the flying house, she'd spent another hour searching the nearby area for any hint of the tengu, without any luck. She'd stopped by the station on her way back to update them on the developments, and by the time she got home to the shrine, it was closer to morning than nightfall. Now... she'd usually be at the station hours ago, but she'd just now woken up. She felt guilty about being late for work, but over the past couple of days, she'd had a lot to feel guilty about.

"'Distracted,' right." Kanako said, looking at her from across the table. "You looked like you were getting ready to stab somebody with your chopsticks."

"If so, I'd go for Kanako, myself," Suwako said. "A chest that big has to have a pretty roomy ribcage. Big gaps for them to slip through."

"Dear, hush."

Sanae rubbed at the back of her neck, embarrassed. "It's that obvious, huh?"

"You've never been one for subtlety." Kanako pushed her plate aside and crossed her arms, idly scrutinizing Sanae across the table. "If something is bothering you, you can always talk to us about it. I won't force you, of course, but..."

"... we'll wheedle it out of you anyway if not," Suwako finished for her.

"You would, wouldn't you?" Sanae gave a lopsided smile at that, then sighed. There was so much on her mind, it was hard to know where to begin. … not by mentioning that she'd walked into a death trap, though. She didn't need to make the goddesses worry about her. "I don't know. I'm just thinking about all the stuff happening with those tengu. They wrecked another house last night, and I wonder if there's some way I could have stopped them by now..."

"Well?" Kanako said. "Could you?"

"... er." It wasn't quite the response she'd been expecting. "I mean... maybe? If I wasn't spending so much time at the station, I might have started investigating a lot earlier, and I might have found something by now if so..."

"That's a lot of 'mights,'" Suwako said.

"Well, I guess, but..."

Kanako added, "And Reimu has been investigating them too, I'd imagine. She hasn't managed to stop them either, has she?"

"Nope..."

"Well, you see? You're certainly smarter than Reimu, but I have to admit that she probably has more experience investigating youkai."

"Yeah, I guess so..." Sanae conceded. It made her feel a bit better, but it still wasn't quite the answer she was looking for.

Behind Kanako, the TV was now playing a credit sequence.

"Sanae," Kanako said, more gently. "I'm sure that you're doing the best you can. Gensokyo has half a dozen youkai exterminators, and none of them have managed to solve this yet. You can't hold yourself accountable for it."

"And then, when you _do_ catch those tengu bastards..." Suwako made a thrusting motion with her chopsticks. "Bam! Gensokyo's first televised youkai extermination! It'll be the news event of the year."

"A-ah, that's a little harsh, don't you think?" Sanae asked.

"Nothing's too harsh for that kind of youkai. In the old days, anybody accused of destroying houses would have been sacrificed to the mishaguji, no questions asked."

"That sort of thing is part of the reason we invaded your kingdom, you know," Kanako said.

"It was a good system." Suwako said, matter-of-factly. She turned back to Sanae. "I'll tell you what. I remember a story that's kind of related to all of this, if you're interested."

"A story...?" Sanae _was_ interested. It was rare to hear Suwako talk about herself much. "Sure, if you think it will help!"

Suwako nodded and straightened up in her seat, composing herself. "In the old days—and I mean the real old days, before the old lady over here—" she jerked a thumb toward Kanako "—was even born, there was a year where the winter ended all at once. Practically a blizzard one day, sunny and warm the next. It was kind of a disaster. Flooding, failed crops, just a real mess.

"One day, a messenger arrives in my court. He was from a village up on the mountainside, and said there was so much snowmelt that their village was flooding. They'd heard about my reputation, though, so they offered to start worshiping me if I'd save the place.

"So, I figured, a day or two of work for an entire village of worshipers, not a bad deal, right? I headed up the mountain, and sure enough, the village was in bad shape. Right on the banks of a river, already halfway underwater, and with the entire mountain melting above them and about to fall on their heads. They'd already heard I was coming and prepared a big banquet for me, had their hunters bring in half a dozen deer, big bowls of rice..."

Suwako trailed off with a wistful sigh, and for a moment, Sanae wondered if that might be the end of the story. After a moment, though, she shook herself out of it and continued. "So, we had a nice dinner, then I worked through the night. Raising up earth to divert the river, making new dams, you name it. By the morning, the water was almost gone, and the villagers were so happy, they started getting ready for another feast. And you know what happened then?"

"... what?"

Suwako leaned in, smiling darkly. "The entire hillside the village was on collapsed. A great big landslide. Took out the whole thing." She barely managed to get the last few words out before she broke out cackling. She leaned back and slapped her knee, struggling to speak past the laughter. "Poof! Like that! Barely a handful of them survived."

Sanae was aghast. "That's... that's terrible."

"That _is_ terrible," Kanako said. "Does this story have a point?"

"The point is," Suwako said, and sputtered a few more times, taking a breath to steady herself. She coughed once or twice before she managed to resume. "The point is, just because you lose doesn't mean you did anything wrong. Do your best, and sometimes the ground still falls out from under you. 'Shit happens,' I think the kids these days call it."

"Er... right. I think I get it..." Sanae half-suspected that Suwako had just been looking for a reason to tell the story. "... that doesn't mean I'm giving up, though! As long as those tengu are out there, I'm going to be chasing them!"

"Well, it's good to see you cheering up," Kanako said. She seemed eager to change the topic away from Suwako's story. "For a few minutes there, I was worried."

"Well, I mean. I'm still upset that I haven't caught them, but... there's still hope, right?"

"Well, there you go," Kanako said. "I trust you to take care of them if you get the chance. And while I'm not going to back Suwako's televised execution plan—"

"Because she's a big softy," Suwako chimed in.

"—having you take out a high-profile youkai like that would be nice. We need to take any chance we can get to remind the villagers that there are two shrines in Gensokyo."

Sanae nodded with a smile. She couldn't even really say why—definitely not because of Suwako's anecdote—but after the conversation, she was feeling better. "I won't lose!" she said, pumping her fist in the air. She'd forgotten that she was still clutching her chopsticks in it, so grains of rice went arcing across the table. "I mean, I already beat up Prince Shotoku and a bunch of moon people, so how hard can a—"

She paused. The shrine's TV was still playing, and it had moved on from the movie. Now, the screen displayed Hina sitting at the station's broadcasting desk, cheerily talking to the camera and shuffling letters in her hands.

Oh. Right. This morning was the first airing of Hina's advice show.

Sanae was upright and out of her seat before her brain even entered the picture. "I have to go!"

* * *

Whoever had outfitted these tunnels had a lot to answer for.

First had been some sort of flamethrower trap. The tripwire had sent Rumi stumbling, which was lucky, since the jet of flame passed right through the space where her body had been a split-second earlier. The eruption scared Robo enough that he barked at it for two minutes before she was able to get him to move forward.

A few meters further, she'd triggered another trap. This time, she was alert enough that as soon as she heard the _click_ of it activating, she'd stumble-leapt forward, just in time to avoid an airborne rebar rod that shot out of the darkness. It buried itself ten centimeters into the cave wall, and she didn't even dare to breathe until she'd spotted the tripwire.

After that, she'd coaxed Robo into staying in one place and crept forward alone, scanning the floor carefully. Her eyes caught the glint of a tripwire, and she stepped over it. Barely a meter later, there was another. She moved on... and caught the glint of motion in the darkness, as some kind of automated sentry followed her movements. She dove forward; her hat fell off, and the turret chose the wrong target. A wave of flechettes blasted out, and her hat was blown to shreds before it even hit the ground.

Further down the tunnel, Rumi spotted another tripwire, and stared at it for five minutes, entirely failing to work up the nerve to approach it. With a sigh of defeat, she'd turned around and headed back.

The trip back was all uphill, and she tried to move more slowly anyway, just in case there were some traps she hadn't stumbled into on the way down. It was a good ten minutes of walking before she could hear the distant noises of the hideout.

Not long after, she rounded a corner and found herself face-to-face with Touko and Maeri.

Maeri was holding a crossbow. Touko had apparently fished out one of the more exotic weapons in her arsenal. It was bulky, covered in tubing, and the serrated edge of a circular saw blade was just visible through a slit in the front. Rumi wasn't sure what it was, but she _desperately_ wanted to not see it in action.

Rumi had barely even spotted them before they leveled their weapons at her.

"Well now," Touko said. "What'd I tell you, Maeri? It wasn't an intruder, it was just poor confused Rumi."

Rumi looked between them uncertainly. Maeri said, "Well, it would seem that you're right about the 'confused' part, at least."

"Um," Rumi said. "... hi."

"Hi." Touko gave a menacing little gesture with her weapon. "What's in the bag?"

"Just some..." Rumi knew that her life might depend on the answer. She tried to think of the most convincing lie she could. "Just some stuff." She wasn't much of a liar.

"Uh-huh. Not all those bombs you made for us, is it?"

Rumi's eyes went wide in surprise. "... that tunnel back there is really dangerous," she said, desperately hoping to change the subject.

"Yeah, that's the idea. See, me, I like bein' able to sleep at night knowing nobody's gonna wander into my house. I'm not sure where that tunnel back there goes, but I went two kilometers down once before I started bumpin' into vengeful spirits, so I'm guessing it's nowhere good. Whatever's down there, I think I'm just as happy if it doesn't come up here." Touko glanced over Rumi, her smile widening into a grin. "Except you were headin' the other way, weren't you?"

"I just wanted to go for a walk...?"

"Yeah, nice relaxing walk with a sack full of bombs. You must think I'm pretty dumb, don't you?  
I'm gonna ask you one more time. This time, I want you to think reeeeaaal hard, and consider that maybe, I've got more than two brain cells in my head. What were you doing back there? Before you answer, I want you to remember that when we started this whole business, everyone agreed we were in it to the end."

 _But you threatened to shoot us if we didn't agree!_ Rumi wanted to protest. It didn't sound like a very good argument. At least, it didn't seem like an argument that would make much headway against the type of person who would threaten to shoot people for disagreeing with her. Life was funny like that.

Before Rumi could piece together another terrible lie, Maeri spoke up. "I sent her out. To test one of the bombs."

Touko paused, looking over at her in total disbelief. "You did?"

"Yes, I, ah, you see, I was worried about their strength, and the range of the transmitter. We're trying to move several tons of rock tonight, right? We've only tested them on houses so far, and I'd like to know that it's going to work. We needed to make sure the bombs can deal with stone, and that we can trigger them from a safe distance."

"Then why didn't you say anything until just now?"

"I didn't know she'd chosen to go into the tunnels." Maeri had started out sounding uncertain, but spoke confidently now that she'd honed her lie. Even Rumi was almost convinced. "I asked her to find somewhere rocky, but this _airhead_ must have taken it a bit too far. … isn't that right, Rumi?"

"Huh? Ohh, um, yeah, that's right! I'm an airhead. I even forgot to set a bomb down there...!"

Touko scowled, glancing between the two. She clearly still harbored some suspicions about the whole affair... but also didn't seem to have any other accusations she could lob at them. She glowered at Rumi for a moment before giving a frustrated growl. "Can't bomb the caves, you'll bring the whole place down on us. I don't want you doin' it outside, neither. Last thing we need is more attention right now. We clear?"

Rumi and Maeri both nodded very, very quickly.

"Good." Touko reluctantly lowered her bulky franken-gun. "Anyone else heads into the tunnels, they're gettin' shot on sight, good reason or no."

With one last grumble, Touko stomped back toward the hideout. Rumi barely even dared to breathe until she was out of sight. "... so, um. I'm really happy you stopped Touko from shooting me, but, er... why?"

Maeri shook her head and sighed,. Rumi only now noticed that she'd had her crossbow drawn and ready this whole time... but it was pointed more toward Touko than Rumi. "Touko is, to put it bluntly, a murderous asshole, and I'm pretty sure Ririsa will shoot whoever she's told to as long as she's getting paid. With you around, at least those of us who are borderline sane outnumber them. … please, though, don't take it too personally. I still think you're an annoying airhead who only ties her shoes in the morning through some sort of miracle. Just, some things are more important than that."

"... oh."

Maeri sighed and shouldered her crossbow, then started up the slope toward the hideout. "Hurry up," she said. "Tonight's the big bombing, and I still need to rig those things for remote."

* * *

The door to the studio had a handwritten sign on it, one that Sanae had made during the first regular news show—LIVE BROADCAST IN SESSION. QUIET, PLEASE!

She turned the knob slowly and slipped in through the door, tiptoeing the whole way. Inside the studio, there were only a handful of people. Nitori was sitting at the mixing desk, Hatate was reclined at one of the spare desks and idly looking at pictures on her camera, and Cirno was standing behind the studio camera, looking bored and antsy but, thankfully, not making any noise.

At the news desk was Hina. Something glittered at her feet, and it took Sanae a moment to realize what it was—salt. Somebody had poured a thick ring of salt around the seat. Sanae wasn't sure if that would actually contain a goddess' impurity, but she had to admit, it was probably better than nothing.

Hina shuffled through a few letters. "Our next letter is from K. K writes, 'I'm a werewolf. I recently met a wonderful wolf tengu. When we were introduced, she thought that I was a normal youkai wolf, and I was too embarrassed to tell her otherwise. Now we've been dating for half a year, and she still thinks that I'm just too busy to go on dates more than once a month...'"

Sanae crept through the studio and knelt down next to Nitori. "Sorry I'm late," she whispered.

"Eh, don't worry about it. Feeling a bit better now?"

"Mmhm." Sanae glanced toward Hina. "Was the salt circle your idea?"

"Yeah. I would have liked something a bit stronger, but you weren't around, so... I made do."

In the background, Hina continued speaking cheerily to the camera. "Well, K, I feel like the important thing in a relationship is trust and openness. I know that confessing that you lied feels hard at this point, but the longer you let it go, the more difficult it will become. I'm sure that if this tengu loves you..."

"Oh, sorry..." Sanae glanced aside, embarrassed. "I just... had a lot of thinking to do. I'm not used to people trying to kill me."

Nitori nodded uncertainly. "That's probably a good thing?"

"Probably."

"... and have the conversation in a public place so she can't eat you if she gets upset. Hopefully it won't come to that, of course. Good luck!" Hina shuffled to the next letter in her stack. "Our next letter is from Anonymous. Anonymous writes, 'I'm not good at writing these things, but here goes. I'm a youkai..."

"Hina's actually pretty good at this stuff," Sanae said. "I'm glad we gave her a chance."

Nitori nodded, but her attention was focused on Hina.

"... started working with a human. She is really nice for a human, and not even a little dumb. I feel really happy after I talk to her, and whenever she isn't around, I feel lonely and think about her. I think I have a crush. I don't know how these kind of things work with humans, though, and won't she think it's pretty weird if I'm a youkai?' Well, Anonymous, human-youkai relationships have grown a lot more socially acceptable since the spell card rules were established. So, please don't let that stand in your way, although, of course, you should keep the human's social situation in mind too. With that said..."

"Have you heard anything else from the radio?" Sanae asked.

Nitori shook her head. "Nope. It's been quiet since last night."

"Hmm. I guess they decided not to use it anymore, since we can hear them. They only time they've said anything lately was to talk to me, after all..."

Nitori nodded, although her eyes drifted back to Hina.

"... hope that it all turns out well for you! Now, with that, I'm afraid that I'm all out of time for today." Hina sat the last letter down on the desk and bowed to the camera. "Thank you for your letters! As I said before, I'm Hina Kagiyama. Have a good day, Gensokyo, and please remember to tune in for your nightly news at seven o' clock!"

It took a moment for Nitori to glance down and push the button to cut off the camera feed. "You can shut it off now, Cirno."

Cirno hit a button on the camera, then puffed her chest out, posing next to it proudly. "Did you see that?! I'm the best camera fairy in Gensokyo!"

"Yeah, sure," Nitori said.

"You did great!" Sanae said. " _Especially_ at being quiet." She'd found that part very important to stress whenever possible. She shot Cirno a thumbs-up, then turned to Hina. "And your advice was really good too! You're a natural."

"Ah, well..." Hina folded her hands in her lap and smiled. "People are confused about my ability sometimes. When I absorb misfortunes from people, I don't absorb general bad luck. I absorb _specific_ misfortunes that would hurt them otherwise. By now, I think I've seen every way that a human's life can go wrong. It makes it easier to guess how to do things right."

"Huh..."

"Does this mean that you'd like me to make another episode next week?"

"Oh! Right! Yeah! It was really good, I think!"

"I don't see what's the big deal about some lady reading things and talking to herself," Cirno griped. "I could make a way better show."

Sanae ignored her. "Hopefully we can get more letters next time."

"Ah, yeah," Nitori said. "The village didn't send many, so we asked around and got some from the station's employees and stuff. It isn't anything I'd count on for next time."

"That was a good idea! You've got a better handle on this TV stuff than you think."

"E-eh, ah, really? Well, I'm learning from an expert, I guess."

Before Sanae could respond, a burst of static filled the room. It took her a moment to realize it had come from the radio, still sitting on the mixing desk, where she'd left it the night before. "Hey, human girl. You there?" the same voice said.

After the night before, Sanae was reluctant to answer... but it wasn't like it was going to resolve itself. She still took a breath to steady herself before picking it up. "I'm here!"

"So, time for you to do me a few favors, to pay back all the inconvenience you've caused me n' my associates. There's a clearing about two kilometers southwest of your station on the mountain, right next to a big outcropping. You know the place?"

"Er..." She didn't, but she was pretty sure she could find it. "I think?"

"Good. Tonight at nine PM, meet me there. Since you've played along and all, I'm gonna give you an exclusive interview."

Sanae frowned at the radio. Admittedly, she'd only spoken to the voice on the other end once before, but it didn't really seem like her speed to grant favors. Especially the day after an assassination attempt. Still, tengu could be weird sometimes. "Um... okay?"

"Show up on time, show up alone, and show up unarmed. Bring that radio of ours, too. It's about time you give back what you stole from us. If you test me... I'm gonna make the whole human village pay. Understand?"

"I..." This all sounded like another trap... but a face-to-face meeting with the tengu was too good to pass up. She might not get a better opportunity to get to the bottom of this. "I'll be there."

"Good. See you then."

The radio shut off with a click.

For a moment, the studio was silent. Sanae and Nitori were both left frozen in place, staring at the radio. Sanae was pretty sure that she could feel Hatate's eyes on them from across the room, Hina was looking over, frowning in confused concern, and Cirno... well, Cirno had already gotten bored and wandered off. Fairies.

Sanae was the one to break the silence. "I have to go."

"Are you sure?" Nitori asked. "I mean... you almost died last night, didn't you?"

"If I can get even a chance to stop them..."

"She said it's going to be an interview, though." Hatate rose from her seat and approached the group. "That story's going to be, like, enormous. Kind of mad she didn't ask for me."

Nitori shot her a glare. "I don't think it's really going to be a fun kind of occasion." She glanced back to Sanae. "Uh. I did get that portable camera you wanted, though. So you'll at least be able to tape it."

"Oh, that will be nice, I guess." Sanae sighed, but then forced herself to perk back up. Moping around wasn't going to solve anything, and for the moment, the station needed her attention. "Anyway, I don't need to worry about that until tonight! You did a really good job, Hina. If you want to do more episodes, I think it turned out really good. I can give you your payment now, if you want."

"Oh, thank you." Hina rose from her desk and smiled, but didn't step past the salt barrier yet. Sanae got the feeling that Nitori had given her some very strict instructions in that regard. "But is everything going to be okay? I don't want to distract you if there are problems that you need to be dealing with."

"There are problems, but we can deal with them later. I'd rather not make you wait..."

"Hey, uh. Before you get busy and all..." Nitori grabbed the radio and turned it over in her hands. "Mind if I take a look at this? If you're giving it back, this is my last chance."

"Sure." Sanae didn't give it a second thought. She looked back to Hina. "Now, um, let's get your pay taken care of..."

* * *

The day had passed at a crawl.

Now that Touko no longer trusted her, Rumi was under house arrest. Nobody had _said_ that she was confined to her room. They'd just sort of hinted it. Like the way that, the one time Rumi had stepped outside, Ririsa was sitting in sight of her doorway, with her crossbow laying across her lap. She'd given Rumi a pointed expression. Rumi had retreated back into her room.

Little hints like that.

They'd even moved Robo's food and water bowls out of her room and kept the dog to themselves. She didn't even get company.

She considered her options, but there weren't many of them. She could dismantle the bombs, but unless she smashed the pieces, any kappa could probably figure out how to put them back together at this point, and Touko would probably kill her for her trouble. She could make a break for it and try to dash out the front door, but the odds of that succeeding seemed... slim. Even if she did get away, Gensokyo was only so big. Anybody sufficiently determined could probably hunt her down sooner or later, and Touko didn't seem like the type who would let a grudge go that easily.

At some point, she drifted off into daydreams about less realistic options. If she could just grow butterfly wings and fly to the moon, for example, this would all be a lot easier.

She was still daydreaming hours later, when Touko pushed the curtain to her room aside. "Almost time to make your big debut," she said.

Rumi pushed herself up from her nest-shaped bed and dragged her brain back to the present moment. "I really don't want to..."

"See, I already figured you'd say that. That's why I'm sending Maeri to keep an eye on you."

Maeri stepped into the room, already dressed in her tengu costume, apart from the mask hanging around her neck. There was a shovel slung back over her shoulder. Wordlessly, she lowered it and slid it toward Rumi.

Rumi eyed it. "What's this for...?"

"The bombs need to go in the ground," Maeri said. "We're making a hole, not lifting a building, remember?"

Touko slapped a hand onto her shoulder. "Plus, Maeri knows right where it needs planted, so this is killin' two birds with one stone. Me and the others will be dealing with that shrine maiden."

"And you aren't picking a fight?" Maeri glanced back to Touko anxiously. "Orisa isn't good at fighting. If you do something stupid and she gets hurt..."

"Well, it's lucky for you that I'm not stupid." Touko's voice held a slight edge of menace. "Now go on, get your costumes on and get moving. Once the bomb's planted, get away and wait for my signal. All good?"

"I suppose," Maeri said. Rumi just gave a glum nod.

"Good. And cheer up. By this time tomorrow, half the human village will be ours for the pickin'."

* * *

Before Sanae knew it, it was nine PM, and she'd spent the whole day second-guessing herself. She settled on meeting the tengu, and following their instructions to the letter, if only because the alternatives were all worse. She gathered the radio from Nitori, and spent a few minutes fiddling with the camcorder she'd bought until she was sure she knew how to use it.

And then, after saying her goodbyes, Sanae took off down the mountainside and into the night.

* * *

Rumi struggled up the hillside, with the sack of bombs on her back weighing her down. They hadn't spoken for most of the walk, but she could still feel Maeri's crossbow pointed at her back.

In front of them, the Moriya shrine was just visible over a ridge.


	9. Chapter 9

From the ground, Ririsa could see Sanae, even in the rapidly darkening night sky. The white shrine maiden uniform stuck out like a sore thumb. At least it meant she wouldn't get the drop on them. Sanae descended toward the clearing, and Ririsa stepped back, concealing herself in the underbrush. Across from her, Touko stayed in place, keeping her crossbow trained on the shrine maiden the entire time.

Sanae landed. Touko stood her ground. "Took you long enough," she announced. "You came alone, right?"

"I did!" Sanae said. "I'm unarmed, like you asked! Don't hurt anybody!"

"Good. Now, here's what's gonna happen. Stay real still and don't make any sudden movements, but toss that radio to me. Got it?"

"Right..." Sanae did so, kneeling down and giving the radio an underhanded toss to land near Touko's feet.

Touko gave a subtle gesture with her hand. That was the signal. The shrine maiden seemed to be cooperating. Ririsa slipped out of her cover and crept forward. Across from her, Orisa did the same thing. They both kept their bows trained on Sanae the entire time.

She'd tried telling Touko that this was crazy, that even if you _could_ fight a shrine maiden, that didn't mean you should go out of your way to piss them off. There were some forces you just didn't meddle with, and for a youkai, shrine maidens were pretty high on that list. As usual, Touko hadn't listened. Everything had to be her way, and she seemed convinced that it would all work out as long as they were careful.

Maybe so. The risk if they failed was pretty spectacular, though. Ririsa slid her finger onto the trigger and prepared to fire at a moment's notice. Maybe she'd just shoot the girl first and simplify matters.

"There's a good girl." Now that the other two were close enough to keep Sanae covered, Touko knelt down and grabbed the radio. When she straightened up, she eyed the black object in Sanae's other hand. "What's that thing?"

"It's a camera." Sanae slowly offered it up for inspection. "Just a camera!"

"Good. The more people who hear what I've got to tell you, the better."

Sanae shifted uneasily and glanced back over her shoulder, finally seeming to realize that the two of them weren't alone. It didn't slow her down for long. "Are you going to tell me what this is all about?! Why did you smash those houses?!"

"Why don't you turn on that camera before I answer? Seems like kinda a waste to say it just for you."

Sanae spent a few seconds fussing with the camera, then raised it again, pointing it at Touko. Touko grinned behind her mask and leaned in. "So, then, you want to hear why we're doing all this?"

"Of course I do!"

"It's all in the name. The Tengu Anti-Human Militia." Touko leaned forward, grinning behind her mask. "Do you realize how long humans have had their way in Gensokyo? Exterminatin' any youkai who crosses the line, then falling back on the spell card rules when the youkai want to act up? I haven't been keepin' any of this a secret. We're the first wave of a youkai revolution. We're here to make sure you humans go back to fearing the dark. None of this nonsense where a youkai gets punished for eating one damn kid. Once we're..."

Ririsa let her focus slip from the conversation and stifled the urge to yawn. Touko had been practicing her damn speech for half the day, and she was tired of hearing it. It didn't even mean anything. Just another way to convince the rest of Gensokyo that everything that had happened so far, and tonight's activities especially, had been committed by a group of tengu. Just a bunch of smoke and noise to make it all sound political. With any luck, once it was all over with, all of their crimes would be pinned on a bunch of tengu who never actually existed, and anybody investigating it would be too busy chasing down ghosts to find the real evidence.

Too bad the actual process was so boring.

Touko was still going. "... and, see, that's the problem. Me n' the girls have been attacking humans for a week now, and things haven't changed one bit. Really breaks my heart."

"That's crazy...!" Sanae, at least, seemed to be buying it. "You can't just expect humanity to surrender to a bunch of youkai!"

"Well, you're right about one thing. Just robbin' a bunch of houses isn't gonna make it happen. And that's why I've put together a little punishment for you." Touko spoke into the radio. "Why don't you girls show our friend here our little surprise?"

* * *

The spot for the bomb's placement had to be a very particular one, Maeri said. She'd spent ten minutes taking measurements and double-checking them against a map before she decided where it needed to go, and she left the real work of digging the hole to Rumi. The hole had to be a meter and a half deep, enough to fit a pile of anti-gravity bombs and tamp some dirt down on top of them. At least the soil here was soft. Ten meters farther up the slop, the ground leveled off, and the great surface of the Moriya shrine lake stretched out toward the horizon.

Once the bomb was in place, they retreated—far, far away. Maeri hadn't been sure how far they needed to go to be safe, so just in case, they'd kept going until they were on a ridge that overlooked it, half a kilometer away. Rumi still didn't feel safe, but she was definitely happy that she wasn't _downhill_ from everything that was about to happen.

"This should do it," Maeri said. "At least, this is the longest distance that I'm comfortable using the detonator over, rather. I wasn't kidding about that part earlier. We probably shouldn't go any farther than we need to. It's really, er, a dicey proposition already."

Rumi felt a brief surge of hope. "So the bombs might not work...?"

"If that happens, we just move closer and try again. Maybe pack a really strong umbrella."

Rumi nodded, with a defeated sigh. It wasn't like her luck to let her get out of this that easily.

Maeri glanced over to her. "Look," she said. "I know this isn't exactly the most glamorous job, but you need the money as much as Orisa and I do, right? Personally, I'd rather... well there are a dozen better ways to go about this, really. Safer ones. … if it makes you feel any better, I did make Touko promise she'd give them a chance to evacuate first. I mean... that _is_ coming from Touko, but considering that she didn't threaten to kill me, I consider it a positive sign, all things considered!"

As if on cue, Touko's voice spoke up from the radio. "Why don't you girls show our friend here our little surprise?"

Maeri sighed. "Honestly, I don't know why that girl can't say things normally once in a while. It isn't like it would kill her or anything. Go ahead and hit it."

Rumi hesitated, casting an indecisive glance down to the transmitter in her hand. "How, um, how do we know if the village is evacuated...?"

"Ahh, I don't know that we can."

"I don't... I-I don't think we should be doing this."

"Are you really going to have second thoughts _now_? Just hit the button and get it over with."

"I don't... um..." Rumi whimpered and straightened up, summoning up every scrap of resolve in her gangly body. "N-no!" Her own outburst was so abrupt that it almost scared herself. She drew her arm back and hurled the transmitter, chucking it toward the horizon with as much force as she could muster. It flew off down the mountainside and disappeared into the trees below. "I won't! I'm not going to hurt all those... people, and houses, and _dogs_! That's crazy! We shouldn't do this stuff anymore!"

Maeri held her gaze throughout the impromptu speech, then sighed and shook her head. "You know, Orisa and Ririsa and I actually had a betting pool going on whether you were going to chicken out or not? You just cost me eight hundred yen." She dug in her pocket for a moment, then pulled her hand out again and gave it a demonstrative shake.

She was holding an identical transmitter. "I made about ten of these things, you know."

She hit the trigger.

The other times the bombs had detonated, the sound of their unearthly antigravity field had dominated the first second or two. This time, though, she was too far away to see any sign of it except for a faint blue glow. Instead, the detonation was announced by a loud crack of splintering stone. A ring of soil on the slope shuddered, as a hemisphere of dirt and stone suddenly found itself compelled to fly into the air. A deep, seismic rumble ran through the mountainside, and with a last few cracks, the dirt took off flying straight up, shedding torso-sized rocks and raining dirt.

That wasn't the terrifying part, though. The terrifying part was the roar of water, as an entire lake found a new outlet through its weakened wall.

The Moriya shrine lake burst past its shores and began gushing downhill.

* * *

Touko had shown them on a map, back when this all started, that first day in the hideout.

"Our friend Maeri here used to do flood monitorin' on the side. To hear some of the old-timers tell it, the human village would've been wiped out four times by now if it wasn't for her. So, here..." Touko pushed a paper across the table. It was an endless series of wobbly rings and parallel lines. "... is a topographic map of Gensokyo. Notice anything in particular?"

They all leaned in and looked at the map. It didn't mean much to Rumi. The way some of the rings were shaped, they kind of made her think of chickens, but she really doubted that was what Touko was getting at.

"Gensokyo's lowest point is here, in Misty Lake," Maeri explained, tapping near the middle of the map. "There are mountains in most directions from the central plains, so you can think of Gensokyo as, I don't know, a giant bowl or something. If there were no friction, anything you dropped into Gensokyo would end up in Misty Lake."

"I'm sure this is a great science lesson, but I'm not hearing how it's going to make us rich," Ririsa said.

Orisa shot her a scowl across the table. "Let her talk."

"I'm getting to that part, if you'd kindly let me finish. _Here_ ," Maeri tapped a spot not far from the first, "is the human village, not at much of a higher elevation, and up here," she tapped a series of concentric circles a short distance away, "Is the Moriya shrine, which has a very large lake behind it. You don't get lakes on top of mountains very often, you know. They're in a delicate position. It only takes a small shift in the balance..." Maeri drew an X along the narrowest side of the lake. She traced a dotted line down the mountainside, and at the bottom, traced out a broad circle that covered Misty Lake and most of the human village. In the middle, she wrote, 'AFFECTED AREA.' "... and you get a catastrophic flood."

Ririsa frowned down at it. "So, what, we can flood the village?"

"Essentially, yes."

"How's that supposed to help us?"

"You're not usin' your head," Touko said. "Flood the village and all the humans are going to die or leave, right?"

"Sure."

"The houses, all their nice stuff, it's all still left there. It's gonna be pretty soggy, so you're not gonna loot any food, but money, tools, metalwork... it'll all be left there, underwater, where nobody can get to it."

"No _humans_ ," Orisa corrected her, with realization dawning on her face. "But kappa can."

"What'd I tell you?" Touko slid the map closer to herself and admired it like a piece of fine art. "An entire village, ours to steal whenever we want it. Not bad at all for a week or two of work, now is it?"

* * *

The tremor ran through the Moriya shrine like an earthquake, rising into a rumble of creaking wood. The entire building shuddered, rocking in place. Pictures fell off the walls, shelves toppled over, and dishes crashed to the floor, adding to the cacophony.

And Suwako's body seized up mid-step, going rigid. Soundlessly, she toppled to the floor.

Pain was speared through her being, barbed wire running through her veins and ripping away anything that slowed it down. For a moment, her corporeal form flickered, until she redoubled her concentration, focusing herself on the here-and-now. Her body solidified, but it wasn't cooperating. She planted a hand against the floor and pushed herself up with a pained groan. Her hands shook, but they did the job.

The sounds of falling objects were trailing off by now, but over it was a deafening roar, a sound like the end of the world. It left the entire building shuddering under its force. It was loud enough that she only now realized that somebody was calling for her. "Suwako! Suwako, the lake!"

Suwako straightened herself up, standing again, and took a breath to steady herself. Kanako hurried around the corner. "Somebody attacked the lake!" she said.

"Yeah, I know."

Now that she'd recovered from the shock, she could sense the damage, like poking at a cavity with her tongue. The lake, grand and ancient it was, had been acting as her goshintai ever since they'd come to Gensokyo. In every way that mattered, it was a more substantial part of herself than the actual body she'd manifested.

And now she could feel the water gushing out of it, like a severed artery.

Suwako took a step forward, and was pleased to find that she could mostly manage to move her body now. She slouched to the back door of the shrine and pushed it open, with Kanako following behind her.

Even in the moonlight, the damage was easy to see. There was a torrential river bursting out of the lake's shores a hundred meters away. Downhill, it formed a wide sheet of water roiling down the mountainside, overturning boulders and toppling trees as it went.

"Can you stop it?" Kanako asked.

"I can sure try."

"I want to look for whoever's responsible, but..."

Kanako trailed off, worriedly looking over her. Suwako straightened her posture and scoffed. "Don't wait up on my account. I should have died a millennium ago. If today's the day, so be it."

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of."

Suwako shook her head with a sigh. Degenerate days, these were, where a lady couldn't even joke about her own impending death without being taken seriously. It seemed like a show of force was in order.

Suwako crouched down, holding her hands wide, then swung them together in a forceful clap. In response, the earth followed her lead. Two waves of stone rose up and rushed together toward the hole. Where they met, they smashed together, exploding in a rumble of fracturing earth. A pile of rubble cascaded down to cover the hole. The flow of water was temporarily slowed, but soon, it started worming its way through the cracks. One by one, it pushed the boulders free, sending them rolling down the hill, with new streams of water following them.

"I didn't get this old to die so easy. Go on, scram! A kid like you would just slow me down."

Kanako didn't look convinced, but she relented. "Be careful."

"Eh. No promises."

Suwako didn't wait to see how she responded. Already, most of her temporary dam had been pushed aside, and with little to hold it back, the torrent of water was ripping up the last few boulders.

* * *

The crashes and groans of fracturing rock echoed across Gensokyo like distant thunder.

Sanae whirled in the direction it had come from, and was just in time to see the dark blob of flying landmass rise to obscure the stars. Below it was a hazy pillar formed by falling dirt and stone. A low roar, like static, rose from that direction, while the sound of the initial rupture echoed across Gensokyo's hills and valleys.

It took a second longer for her to realize—that was all in the direction of the shrine.

"What did you do?!" Sanae turned back on the tengu, her hands shaking. The camera was entirely forgotten. "What was that?!"

"Like I said, just a little present from us to the humans."

"What _was_ it?!"

Sanae took a step forward, clenching her free hand into a fist at her side, but the tengu stood her ground. "We blew a hole in that lake of yours."

Sanae froze in place for a moment, stunned. Her first thought was about the shrine, the goddesses... but in the direction of the lake, that static roar was growing. Only now did Sanae realize that it was the sound of water flowing downhill. Lots and lots of water.

"Th-that's..." Sanae's voice caught in her throat, but her expression hardened. Almost without thinking on it, she called on her powers. A wind picked up in the clearing, whirling around it like a gentle tornado. Soon, it was enough to flatten the grass and tug at clothes. "Why would you do that?!"

"Gonna flood the human village. Whoosh. All gone. Let you folks get used to being the ones getting hunted for a while." Behind her mask, the tengu grinned

Sanae froze, stunned in horrified realization. "Y-you're... you're..." She was almost too emotional to string a sentence together. "You're _evil!_ "

The wind picked up to a gale force, a bottled storm trapped in the clearing and making the trees creak under the strain. One of the other tengu took a worried step back. "Hey, uh, boss...?" She sounded like she was barely managing to not take off running.

"And here's the fun part," the lead tengu said, ignoring that. "You're not gonna exterminate me."

"Y-yes I am! You probably just killed a lot of people!" And if it was the lake, Suwako and Kanako could be—Sanae cut off that train of thought, but tears still welled into her eyes and blurred her vision. She blinked them away, and her hand clenched into a fist around an onusa that wasn't there. "Fight me! Right now!"

"Nah. See, the way we figure it, the water's going to take about nine minutes to hit the village. So, if you leave right now... just maybe, you can warn them in time."

Sanae faltered. The only real option here was to go warn the village. It was obviously what the tengu wanted her to do, though. Part of her wanted to stay and fight, make sure that they paid for everything they'd done tonight. But the _heroic_ thing would be...

She glared at the tengu. "I'm never forgiving you for this. Any of it."

"Didn't plan on it."

With a frustrated groan, Sanae leapt into the air and took off flying toward the station.

* * *

The sound was impossible to miss. Even inside the station, it was a low background rumble. Outside, it filled the air like a storm. When Nitori flew up into the air to get a better look, she was only able to see trees falling one by one, like dominoes. The air was filled with the thunderclaps of tortured, shattering wood.

"What's going on?" Hatate called up to her.

"Don't know." Nitori drifted back down.

"Think it's something to do with Sanae's thing with the tengu?"

"I wouldn't bet against it."

Nitori glanced an anxious glance in the direction Sanae had headed toward. They'd told her she'd face consequences if she didn't come alone, but whatever was happening over there still looked pretty darn consequential. Maybe it had all gone wrong. Maybe it had been an ambush after all. Sanae could be laying there right now, dying on the forest floor.

Nitori cursed under her breath, with every obscenity she'd heard in a few centuries of life and a few new ones she made up on the spot. She wasn't brave. On a good day, at least, she wasn't actively cowardly. And sticking her nose into a fight between a shrine maiden and a bunch of tengu was a good way to _lose_ her nose. But if it was _Sanae_...

"I-I..." She realized her voice was shaking a bit too late, and drew herself up to her full, miniscule height. "I'm going."

"Going?"

"To find Sanae."

"Oh." Hatate glanced back toward the direction of the roar. "That's pretty dumb, if you ask me."

"Yeah, well!" Nitori didn't actually have a retort to that. She puffed out her chest, prepared to take off into the air...

… and a blue-green-white blur crashed down in front of her. Sanae didn't even slow down, but let her momentum carry her in an unsteady run across the ground until she crashed to a stop against the door, her hand already jerking on the handle.

"Hey, whoa, Sanae!" Nitori called. "What happened out there?"

Sanae looked back wildly. Her eyes were red, her cheeks were streaked with tears, and she looked like she wasn't sure whether to bawl or rip out somebody's throat. Maybe both. "The station!" she said breathlessly. "I need to broadcast! Now!"

"Eh? Uh." Without waiting for an answer, Sanae threw the door open and ran inside. Nitori hurried after her. "Right, wait! I'll help!"

By the time Nitori got inside, Sanae was already sitting at the mixing desk. Frantic and barely able to see through her dears, she was fumbling with the controls, and Nitori stepped in, taking over for her. Sanae managed a grateful glance before she hurried over and grabbed the camera, shoving her face up in front of the lens.

"Everybody in the village! Listen to me! There's a flood coming, a big one! You have to get out right now! Get out of the village, get to high ground! Please, it isn't safe!"

* * *

Across her many incarnations, Akyuu had never been one for early nights. It didn't combine well with her youkai studies, for one thing. As the head of the Hieda household and known as the most intelligent human in the village, she often spent the entire day attending to more mundane matters. It wasn't rare for nighttime to be the only chance she got to focus on her studies and completing the Gensokyo Chronicle.

She was also well aware of just how limited her lifetime was. Every hour wasted in sleep was an hour she wasn't going to get back.

Tonight, she'd just settled in for another night of studying when the door flew open.

She glanced up. One of the servants stood there—Saburo Itagaki. Between servants, guards, gardeners, aides, and physicians, the Hieda family was one of the largest employers in Gensokyo, but Akyuu knew every one by name. Not that she knew much else about him. He was usually assigned to her uncle's household, on her payroll but only around the main Hieda mansion during special events.

He was wheezing and out of breath, and was barely a step inside the door before he doubled over in a forceful bow. "Lady Hieda, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I—"

"Should really learn to knock," Akyuu said, with a slight smile. "Is something wrong?"

"Yes, there's an emergency! The girl on the television, she says a flood is going to destroy the village, and we only have a few minutes to evacuate!"

"A flood—?" The words had barely gotten out of Akyuu's mouth before she realized their urgency. It didn't leave much time to stop and consider the situation. She was rising to her feet before she'd finished speaking.

Akyuu had made plans for this sort of possibility. She'd made plans for most possibilities, over the years. "Wake the household. Send one servant back to assist me with evacuating the Chronicle, one to each other Hieda household to spread the word, and one to raise a fire alarm."

"Of course!" He looked relieved to have orders to act on.

"And thank you, Itagaki. We all owe you a debt if we survive this."

Akyuu was already moving as she spoke. The servant left, and the next few minutes were a blur of activity. The entire house stirred into motion like an upset hornet's nest. One of them arrived to bundle up the Gensokyo Chronicle, sixteen fragile, irreplaceable scrolls. It was soon obvious that something was amiss. Fire bells were clamoring up and down the village's streets, and the distant shouting of crowds was barely audible over them.

By the time Akyuu stepped out onto the street, half a dozen servants had conglomerated around her, reluctant to let her out of sight. She wasn't sure if they were acting more out of concern for her, or just using her as a lighthouse in the current morass of uncertainty. If they were willing to help, at the moment, she honestly didn't care.

Akyuu issued clipped orders as her eyes adjusted to the night, moving as quickly as her frail body would let her.

"Help the old lady over there. Meet us at the ridge above the compound."

"Take a weapon and head to the ridge. Make sure there are no youkai waiting."

And: "Please stay ahead of me, but pay attention. If I die... the yama will want to know the full circumstances."

"Lady Hieda... I'm sure that you'll be fine." The servant didn't seem quite so sure, herself.

The streets were engorged with people. Enough of them seemed aware of what was going on to head for the hills, and those who didn't were roused from their houses and quickly filled in. By the time the great stream of humanity reached the gates, they were shoulder-to-shoulder, and spread out only once they were outside.

Akyuu was halfway up the hillside when she heard a dull roar behind her.

Her eyes were somewhat adjusted to the darkness. It was enough, by the light of the moon, to recognize that something was different about Youkai Mountain. A vertical strip had been carved down it, trees toppled and soil washed away, and flowing water now glistened where they'd been. The sound was coming from much closer, though, as the vanguard washed over the low-lying plains.

"Keep moving!" she shouted, and tore her own gaze away to struggle up the hill. A servant offered her a hand, and for once, she wasn't too proud to accept. Foot after foot, she struggled upward, while behind her, the roar of water rose like an invading army.

She couldn't help herself. She glanced back over her shoulder when it seemed like it couldn't get any louder.

They were just high enough to see out over the rooftops of the village. Torches and lanterns still lit the night, a broad ring of light to mark humanity's territory.

At the far side of it, the roar reached a crescendo as the water smashed into the furthest wall. The walls didn't hold.

Akyuu wasn't high enough to see the water as it advanced. What she could see, though, was the wave of darkness as it crept forward into the village, extinguishing lanterns and torches as it went.

The Child of Miare watched, and knew that she'd remember for lifetimes to come.

* * *

Suwako's clothes were soaked through. The dirt for meters around the hole had been churned into mud, and it was splattered across her body. Her head was feeling faint, and every now and then, her physical form flickered out of existence for a moment.

That just meant there was no better time to finish this, really.

She stepped forward, thrusting a hand into the air toward the torrent of water. Earth followed it, rising up to fill in the hole. It was only soil, though, and the water started sweeping it away instantly. Again, Suwako pushed it up, and again, multiple pulses of earth filling the hole as quickly as the water could wear it away, but she wasn't making any progress.

There was only so much stone nearby, and with her energy rapidly fading, she wasn't about to create any from thin air. Her vision was blurring, and the roar of water was drowning out everything else. Her human-shaped body was feeling increasingly like an anchor weighing her down, a malfunctioning piece of machinery with faulty controls.

She stumbled, but recovered, putting the force of her entire body into a blow. She slammed the ground with a fist, and the ground trembled. A meter-thick sheet of pure andesite launched up from the heart of the mountain, as tall as the shrine itself, raining dirt and stone as it thrust into the air. With nothing supporting it from below, it started tilting over from the force of the water, a single massive domino preparing to topple. Suwako gestured again and sent a wave of earth rushing up the mountainside to rest against its side, and another, and another. The slab's movement slowed. She speared her hand into the earth, and stone pillars shot up to brace it.

The stone groaned and rumbled as it adjusted to the strain of the water. But it held.

The flow from the lake slowed to a trickle.

Suwako took a moment to admire her handiwork. Then, she stumbled forward, giving a final exhausted wheeze before she collapsed.

There was no body left to hit the ground.


	10. Chapter 10

"Sanae. Sanae."

A hand shook Sanae's shoulder, and slowly, she stirred back to awareness.

Sanae yawned and rolled over, opening her eyes. That was a mistake. The sun was directly above her. She flinched and shielded her eyes, but it was soon silhouetted by Kanako, peering down at her in concern. "You fell asleep outside last night," she said.

"Oh. Ehe. Sorry." Sanae pushed herself up with a yawn, and her neck ached in protest. The rewards of sleeping without a pillow. She'd probably be stiff and sore for the entire day.

She really had fallen asleep on the front step of the shrine, barely a meter from the donation box. It used to be, the view from the shrine was one of the most scenic in Gensokyo. Now... not so much. She hadn't been able to make out much of it by night, but in the daylight, she could see the aftermath of the previous night's events. The flood's course was a broad, muddy rut, leading from the side of the lake all the way down to the foot of the mountain. Some of the trees had withstood it, while others had left only splintered stumps. Some of the fallen trees had been swept downhill by the current. Others had gotten tangled in their neighbors' branches, left dangling precariously, waiting for the first good wind to send them falling.

It was a wound on the mountain itself, as cruel and obvious as a knife to the gut.

"Don't be. Here." Kanako brushed Sanae's hair out of her face, then slid a plate into her lap. "I made pancakes."

"... oh." Sanae glanced down at them. After the strangeness of the night before, something so normal as being woken up with pancakes almost felt like a dream. "You should have let me cook, though! You're sick, and...!"

"I'm not 'sick.'" Kanako grabbed her own plate off of the donation box and slid down to the floor, her back against a pillar. She tried to hide the difficulty she had with even that simple movement, and failed. "And acting like I'm helpless won't do anything to help me recover."

"Right..."

Sanae poked at the food, but couldn't find much of an appetite in her.

They'd done what they could to shore the lake up last night. It looked like the makeshift dam would hold, for now at least. It had been an hour or two of work, hauling rocks and dirt to plug up the last few leaks. Afterward, Sanae had crouched down in front of the donation box and prayed. Prayed until she'd passed out, apparently.

Laying next to the donation box were Suwako's clothes. They'd found them there, laying on the shore next to the hole she'd plugged.

Suwako had survived. Her spiritual presence hung around the shrine, like the sensation of somebody watching over Sanae's shoulder. She was _alive_. She just wasn't... there.

The damage caused by the explosion hadn't only been physical. The lake was Suwako's goshintai, the vessel of her soul. The mountain was Kanako's. They'd both been hurt last night, desecrated and damaged. Not irreparably, but...

"You shouldn't worry about us too much," Kanako said, as if reading her mind. "We'll be fine."

"But your goshintai...! And Lady Suwako...!"

"Think about it this way." Kanako popped a bite of pancake into her mouth and ate it with infuriating calm, then glanced over to Sanae. "I'm two thousand years old, and Suwako makes me look like a youngster. I've had worse. I _know_ Suwako has, because I did it to her myself. And yet, we're still around."

"Well, yeah, but..."

"So please relax a little. Just a little."

Sanae sighed, but allowed herself to smile. It was hard to argue with Kanako. She just had her own particular blend of confidence and stubbornness. Sometimes, Sanae could almost see how she'd clawed her way to godhood from being a normal human.

Sanae managed to convince herself to take a few bites of her food, cutting and chewing mechanically while her brain slowly worked its way back to full awareness. At some point, she became so focused on it that she didn't notice somebody approaching until they spoke. "... isn't this kind of a strange place to be having breakfast?"

"Huh?" Sanae glanced up. Nitori was standing on the path in front of her. "Oh. Good morning. And... I guess so, huh?"

"... also it's almost noon, you know."

"It was a late night..."

"Yeah, I guess it would be. So, uh..." Nitori's gaze strayed toward the lake. "You guys managed to stop the water last night, huh?"

Sanae nodded. Kanako handled the answer this time. "Suwako did."

"Oh, hey, good. Is it all fixed up now, or...?"

"More or less," Kanako said.

"That's good. I mean, if you want some help, I bet the kappa would be willing to give you a pretty big discount on fixing it up. It's no good for anybody if that thing breaks again."

"We'll keep it in mind," Kanako said, diplomatically.

Nitori shifted from foot to foot. She didn't look like this conversation was going the way she'd anticipated. "Oh, and I was down in the village this morning. It sounds like your message got there in time. Most of them made it outside before the water even reached the walls. You're kind of a hero, I guess."

"That's nice..." Sanae said.

"Nitori." Kanako looked up from her own meal. "I'd rather not listen to you beat around the bush all morning. What do you want?"

"A-ah, um, yeah, right. Well, I know things are hectic and all right now, but I just, ehe, figured I should check in on Sanae. I guess you won't be coming in to the station today, huh?"

Kanako shot her a withering glare, firm enough that even Sanae flinched when she saw it out of the corner of her eye. "She'll be there when she's ready."

"I... don't know when I'll be ready to come back," Sanae said, taking a gentler tone. "I'm going to need to gather a lot of faith for the goddesses to recover, and after all that violence, the lake and mountain will need purified. I'm going to be really busy for a while."

"Oh, yeah. That makes sense. I'll... leave you be, then." Nitori turned to leave, but hesitated and glanced back. "Hey, Sanae?"

"Huh?"

Nitori opened her mouth to speak, and the words died on her lips. Once, twice, three times she tried to talk, all while growing increasingly flustered. Finally, she blurted out, "Do whatever you have to. Me and Hatate can keep the station running for however long it takes."

"Sure." Sanae forced a lopsided smile. "Thanks."

"A-actually!" Nitori rambled on. "Take as much time as you need! Having a human around probably just slows us down, you know...!"

"Um, okay...?"

Nitori looked increasingly bewildered, like she was no longer quite in control of her mouth. She gave an unsteady laugh, trying to pass her comment off as a joke. "So, uh, um. I'm just going to... go... not be here now...!"

Sanae gave an uncertain nod.

Nitori turned, ducked her head down, and took off running back down the path.

* * *

"I," Nitori announced, as she stepped into the studio, "am the biggest idiot who ever lived."

Hatate didn't even look up from fidgeting with her camera. "You're, like, top five at worst. How'd it go?"

"Sanae isn't coming back today. Maybe not for a long time."

Hatate shot her a quizzical look, but Nitori ignored it for now and walked over to flop down behind the mixing desk. Even that felt wrong. She'd needed to run it now and then when Sanae wasn't around, but overall, she'd come to think of it as Sanae's office. It still had half a dozen of her schedule drafts scattered on it, along with a few notes Sanae had jotted to herself—'THURS: PAY FAIRIES!' and 'MINIFRIDGE.' This second one was underlined four times, and Nitori had no idea what it could possibly mean.

She pushed most of these aside for now, found the most recent revision of the schedule, and started studying it. "The flooding nearly killed her goddesses, so she's stuck taking care of them until they get enough faith to recover. Which means that _we_..." Nitori turned in her chair to look at the shelf of videos behind her. "Need to keep this place running until then."

"Uh-huh. ... what're you doing?"

"The schedule says we play comedy movies from noon to four PM today."

Sanae had helpfully grouped the videos by genre, but that still didn't mean much to Nitori. With a sigh, she pulled two cases at random and held them up for comparison. "Alright, pick a title. Kikujiro, or..." She squinted at the second case and carefully sounded out the title. "Go-su-to-ba-su-ta-zu."

Hatate looked up from her phone to peer at them in idle curiosity. "What's up with that second one?"

"I think it's foreign."

"I'm pretty sure nobody's gonna like some dumb movie they can't even pronounce." Hatate glanced between them, frowning. "Do you even think anybody wants to watch movies anyway? The village is, like, post-apocalyptic right now, isn't it?"

"Well, yeah, but we show movies. It's what we do."

"We report news and stuff too, you know," Hatate pointed out, with the slightest edge of annoyance to her voice.

"What, do you have some news to report?"

"Er. Well... Do you still have that tape Sanae shot last night?"

"Huh? Yeah, sure, why?"

Reluctantly, Hatate snapped her camera closed and leaned back in her chair, frowning at the ceiling and thoughtfully twisting a pigtail around her fingertip. "I've got an idea, but it's a weird one. If nobody's going to watch movies or whatever anyway... I could put together everything we know about the whole situation. Like a special edition of a paper. Except, you know. TV."

"If you don't like the movies, you can just say so, you know." Nitori glanced at the covers, and after some consideration, agreed with Hatate on the titles. She slid Kikujiro into the player and queued it up for broadcast. "If you want to do something like that, it's fine with me, but you've got to do all the recording and stuff by yourself."

"Huh? What, you're not gonna help me?"

"I've got other work to do."

Nitori headed to the maintenance room. She could feel Hatate's eyes on her the whole way. Over the past week, she'd transformed the shelves, taking them from a haphazard collection of junk to an organized inventory of every tool or spare part she might need. Walking down the rows, she plucked a few choice pieces of equipment from their resting places—a hand grenade, a spare battery for her flashlight, a _second_ hand grenade, a radio receiver...

She was hovering indecisively over a third hand grenade when Hatate appeared in the doorway. "Hey, wait, are you saying it's just me here all alone today?"

"If you want to complain about it, I could bring in some fairies to help." When that drew a grumble from Hatate, Nitori sighed and glanced to her. "I have more important stuff to take care of today, alright?"

"Like what?"

"Like this."

Nitori lifted the receiver and turned it on. It gave a burst of halfhearted static before going silent.

Hatate looked at it skeptically. "Doesn't seem too important to me."

"Remember that radio we found? The one Sanae took back to the tengu? Before Sanae took it back, I opened it up and hid a little transmitter in there. From now until it runs out of batteries, it's going to send out a signal every few seconds, and with _this_ ," she gave the receiver a shake, "I can figure out where they're at once I detect it. Those tengu are carrying around a tracking device and don't even know it. Does that sound important enough to you?"

"Oh. Neat."

"Yeah. Neat. So, I find the tengu, and then I... um."

"... fight them?"

"... tell Reimu where they're at or something. _I'm_ not dumb enough to fight four or five angry tengu."

"I never thought I'd see a kappa gearing up for youkai extermination."

"Yeah, well." Nitori clipped the receiver to her belt, then started slipping grenades into her pockets. "These youkai have it coming."

* * *

After the bombing, the kappa had retreated to the hideout and stayed there the entire night. Touko had insisted. Anybody looking for them needed to find nothing. Anything linking them to the bombing would defeat all that work they'd done getting humans to chase after the specter of the Tengu Anti-Human Militia.

It had been a long night, followed by an even longer day. Rumi hadn't managed to sleep for a second.

Now, late in the afternoon, Touko had finally given in to her curiosity.

The kappa stepped out of the hideout and made their way to the top of a foothill. After weeks of mostly being nocturnal, the world looked a little strange in the daytime, and Rumi squinted as her eyes adjusted. The hill wasn't tall, but it was tall enough. Below them, a few kilometers distant, the human village was on display.

On one side, a brown smudge stretched across the plains and blocked out a portion of the village, like a bite out of a cookie. Only when Rumi focused on it could she make out the glimmer of sunlight on the water. At its deepest point, the houses were almost covered. Farther out, more and more of the buildings poked above water, until the very edge, where the houses were intact. Altogether, the water didn't even cover a quarter of the village.

Touko had been wearing a triumphant smile when they made their way outside, but now she was frozen, staring at this sight in disbelief. "Does somebody wanna tell me," she said, her voice trembling in barely-restrained outrage, "just what it is I'm lookin' at?"

"There, ah, there are a number of reasons the flooding might not be as extensive—" Maeri began, only to get cut off by Touko whirling on her.

" _Not extensive_?! We didn't go through all that work to give the humans a mud puddle!"

"Well, no, no, but..." Maeri was practically tripping over her tongue, and babbled a few more syllables before managing to string them together coherently. "The hole was as big as I predicted. Rumi and I saw it!"

Touko shot Rumi a suspicious glare, and Rumi added, "It was a _really_ big hole!"

"Then _where_ ," Touko thrust a hand toward the village. Rumi flinched away. "Did all the water go?!"

Everybody stared at the village in silence for a few seconds. "My models were accurate," Maeri said, more calm now that she'd had a few seconds to gather her thoughts. "Even if the ground were more porous than we'd been expecting, or there was a different low point—" Touko was starting to look increasingly impatient, and Maeri skipped to the end. "That much water wouldn't disappear overnight. So, I don't think it made it here in the first place."

"They plugged the hole," Orisa mumbled.

"Yeah. Yeah. I figure they did." Touko gritted her teeth and tucked her thumbs into her belt loops, scowling down at the village like it had betrayed her. After a few seconds, she said, "Rumi, you still have more of them bombs, right?"

"Huh?" The very question made Rumi uneasy. "A-ah, um, I do, but—"

"Good. Get with Maeri and have her wire 'em. We'll give it a few days, though. Give 'em some time to drop their guard again."

"So that's it?" Ririsa frowned over at her. "We just give up and try again next week?"

"Whoa, whoa, hey!" Maeri stepped forward, waving her hands for a time-out. "We should at least see what we have down there before we go chasing after something like that, don't you think? A shirikodama in the hand is worth two in the butt."

Touko scowled at this, but even she couldn't argue with such a time-tested kappa axiom. With a sigh, she gave a begrudging nod. "We've probably got enough of the place flooded to keep busy for now. Might as well get looting while the looting's good." She turned back toward the group, and begrudgingly relaxed her scowl now that they had a plan in place. "Go inside and get your weapons. Don't need to wait until the night if we stick to the deep parts."

A murmur of mixed enthusiasm and annoyance rose from the group as they turned to head back into the hideout. Only once they were well out of earshot of the cave's entrance did Orisa say, "Already plenty of houses, though."

"There is that," Maeri said. "If we're thorough, it will probably take us at least a week to haul the valuables out of those. Flooding the rest of the village right now seems... excessive."

"Dumb," Orisa corrected her.

"That too."

"We, um... we maybe don't have to do it?" Rumi suggested.

Orisa and Maeri were silent. Ririsa just snorted. "Wreck a few houses and you all lose your spines."

* * *

Hatate had never been alone in the station before. It was a strange feeling. Without anybody else around, the place was eerily quiet, apart from the low hum of electronics.

She'd never worked most of the machines in the station before, either. It took her a few minutes just to figure out how to get the tape out of Sanae's camcorder, and a few more to play it.

In front of her, every moment of Sanae's confrontation with the kappa played out on screen. She rewound it and watched it again, and again. A few pivotal minutes, forever captured in time.

This stuff was even better than thoughtography.

After memorizing the contents, she pulled out her notebook. It took most of an hour to organize her thoughts, jotting down a messy tangle of arrows and notes that only slowly resolved itself into legible text. She spent another few minutes looking over it, fretting about word choices, until she realized she was just stalling and forced herself to move on.

She went to the mixing desk and switched the broadcast feed to the camera.

She turned the camera on and walked over to the news desk.

She really, _really_ wished that Hina was here to handle this, but the most important story of the year had just landed in her lap, and her every journalistic instinct screamed for it to be made public as soon as possible. Besides, she probably owed Sanae a little for hiring her in the first place. If she thought about it like that, she almost didn't dread what came next.

She settled into the chair, and only then realized that she was clenching the paper so tightly that it was close to ripping. She smoothed it out on the desk in front of herself and took a deep breath, looking to the camera.

"Good, um, good afternoon, Gensokyo. I'm... I-I'm Hatate Himekaidou, with Gensokyo Channel One news. This is a special news report on the stuff—er, the events of last night..."

* * *

This high on Youkai Mountain, the wind was a constant low howl in the background, tugging at Nitori's clothes. Worse, the foliage up here was sparse, little more than a few hardy plants clinging to the rocks. Practically anybody in Gensokyo with a clear line of sight to the mountain's peak could theoretically see her. Not the kind of place a kappa felt comfortable. Her only consolation was that not even the tengu had much reason to come up here very often.

Which would make it an ideal location for a hideout, if somebody could find some cover.

Once she'd walked as high as she could tolerate, she pulled the receiver out and checked it, squinting against the wind.

Nothing.

She smacked it on the side and gave it a few shakes, but it stubbornly refused to change. Grumbling, she lowered it and looked out over Gensokyo.

The sun was sinking toward the horizon, but she still had a few hours. Even once it went down, well... there was no reason nightfall had to slow down a kappa _or_ radio waves.

"I can do this all day," she muttered.

The barren peak didn't have much of a response to that.

"You can't hide forever!" she added, just loud enough for her voice to echo along the mountainside.

No tengu jumped out to surrender themselves. With a sigh, Nitori slid the receiver back into her pocket and set out down the slope.

* * *

Servants bustled in and out of the Hieda manor, carrying supplies from the storehouses. At Akyuu's order, two of them had borrowed one of the village's few horse-drawn carts, and it was making trips back and forth between storehouses, leaving the manor's usually-pristine courtyard a muddy mess. Two armed guards stood at the front gate, and two more were posted out back. In the midst of this all, constant crowds of refugees went about the business of rebuilding their lives.

The Hieda manor had gotten out of the flood unscathed, apart from getting doused by the initial surge of water, far after it had lost the worst of its momentum. The gardens were a mess and the koi pond was likely a lost cause, but it was a small price to pay. In the aftermath, Akyuu had turned it into a refuge for the villagers left homeless by the flood.

As near as she could estimate, twenty-two households were submerged in whole or in part, and seventeen more had been damaged in the initial rush of water. The Western wall of the village had been breached along most of its length. Six people were believed missing, two of them children, but it wasn't yet apparent if they'd gotten swept away in the flood or just been separated from their families in the confusion.

It was an interesting set of challenges, even for somebody with her organizational capabilities. She hadn't slept since the night before. Sooner or later, she was going to collapse in exhaustion. Until then, though, the Child of Miare was in her element.

"Lady Hieda!" a servant shouted, weaving her way through the clusters of families. "Two more households just arrived!"

"More? Put them in my study. There should be room for four families in there."

"At once."

"Lady Hieda." There had been four servants trailing behind her for quite some time, trying to get their turn at her attention. One of them stepped forward now, raising his voice. "We could only get half of the rice you asked for. There's a shortage in the village, we couldn't—"

"That amount should last for three days," Akyuu said. "It will do for now, but tomorrow, please try again. If you can find anybody with half a shaku to sell, tell them that they can name their price."

"Ah, I can do that, but are you really sure—"

"I am." Akyuu held his gaze until he went silent, bowed, and hurried off.

"Lady Hieda." The second servant. "Your uncle has sent a messenger requesting your presence at his manor."

"Please tell him that I'm too busy to visit, but that I insist on his cooperation in these matters."

"I understand."

"Lady Hieda, I'm sorry to interrupt, but." And a third. "The mermaids have finished their first search of the flooded area. They could find no signs of drowned humans."

"Good. Thank you." The one small blessing of the flood had been that it linked the village to Misty Lake, allowing the lake's mostly-benevolent denizens to lend a hand. Normally, Akyuu would quietly disapprove of such things. Now, she was willing to take all the help she could get.

The fourth servant was preempted by a call from in front of her. "Oh, Akyuu!"

The voice, and the casual mode of address, were both a sharp change of pace. Akyuu came to a stop, becoming aware of the world beyond the little bubble she and her servants were in. They'd almost finished crossing the breadth of the manor to Akyuu's private quarters, but even here, in the hallway, she'd had families sheltered.

Sitting in front of her, looking almost as surprised as Akyuu felt, was Kosuzu.

"Kosuzu. Good afternoon. … I knew Suzunaan was on the edge of the affected area, but I hadn't expected..."

"Dad found out about the tengu breaking in the other day... Suzunaan is okay, but he was worried they might come back for revenge or something. Oh, but!" Kosuzu glanced between Akyuu and her ever-growing tail of retainers. "Don't let me hold you up or anything! You probably have a lot to do right now, right?"

"More than even I had imagined. But most of it can wait for a few minutes. I could use the break."

Akyuu shot a pointed glance to the single, antsy servant who still lingered behind her. "What is it?"

"The horses, Lady Hieda. A child got into the stables and let one of them loose, and I—"

"Would you like me to catch it myself?"

"A-ah? Well, no, of course not, I just—"

Akyuu held his gaze, and after a few seconds, the man dipped a deep bow and hurried off.

"Well then." Akyuu sighed and turned back to Kosuzu.

Most of the refugees had done something to unofficially mark out their family's space in the crowded manor. Kosuzu's family was no different, with a white cloth spread on the floor to hold their belongings.

Unlike most of the families, though, the Motooris had brought what looked like half of their shop.

To begin with, there were three piles of books, each one almost up to Kosuzu's shoulders. In the middle were a lantern and an overstuffed bag full of clothes, with what Akyuu recognized as the shop's cash box peeking out from within. A pile of belongings next to them held two coats, an umbrella, a stack of heavily-stained notebooks, and a walking stick. Next to all of _those_ was a television, muted but playing a video of a man walking down a road.

Akyuu looked over this impressive collection. "You know we aren't going to evacuate to the wilderness, right?"

"Huh?" Kosuzu followed her gaze to the pile of belongings, and it still took a second for her to catch on. "Oh. Well... Dad wouldn't leave the cash box or the ledgers in the shop. The books are all youma books that I'm not sure I should I should leave alone for very long..."

"If they're too dangerous to leave alone, maybe you shouldn't have them," Akyuu remarked dryly.

"... my mom wanted to bring all the clothes and stuff, the walking stick is dad's, and after last night, I thought it would be a good idea to have a TV in case... you know. Anything else happened."

"I can't argue with that part, at least." She'd need to revisit the youma book issue sometime, but now wasn't that time. "I'm just glad you made it out okay."

"Last night was pretty scary. So, er... do we know what's going on? There have been a lot of rumors..."

"Like what?"

Kosuzu leaned closer. "Mom heard from one of our neighbors that the entire Daitoku family vanished last night. That they were spirited away or something."

"The Daitokus' house was destroyed, but they're all fine. They're being housed at my uncle's property. I thought they'd be more comfortable there, since they've done business with him before."

"Oh."

"Well, what else have you heard?" It was interesting to see how the stories had already gotten warped. It was a nice reminder of why it was important to have a written history recorded by a reliable source. Akyuu made a mental note to add a section on the previous night's events to the Chronicle.

Kosuzu frowned as she thought. "I heard a rumor that Miss Reimu was cooperating with those tengu bandits in exchange for them attacking the other shrine, but I'm pretty sure that one's fake..."

"That one is definitely fake. Reimu is furious. She stopped by last night to ask for clues, and she was so upset that some of my guards were afraid of her."

"She _is_ a little scary when she's upset."

"I wouldn't let her hear you say that." Remembering the pile of duties that she still had to attend to, Akyuu started putting together a polite way to excuse herself from the conversation... and then, paused as the television caught her eye. "... can you please make that louder?"

"Huh? Oh, sure." Kosuzu fumbled with the buttons on the side of the TV, and slowly, its sound rose above the noise of the overcrowded mansion.

Hatate was onscreen, squirming and generally looking miserable in the eye of the camera. There was a paper in her hands, and she stared at it in determination, only giving the occasional brief glance to the camera. "—Anti-Human Militia claimed, um, responsibility for the, uh, attacks. They were somehow able to, um, destroy the—er, _collapse_ the bank of the... the lake behind Moriya Shrine, and flood the human village. As far as we can tell, the flooding was stopped by, er..." Hatate shuffled through her papers for a few seconds. "... Suwako Moriya. One of the s-shrine's... the shrine's goddesses."

Hatate's voice cracked, and she took a breath to steady herself before continuing. "The attack was... really bad for the goddesses... and, um, Suwako is too weak to make a corporeal form. And the other one is pretty sick too. According to... a source... they should be okay, but will not recover until they've... they've gotten a bunch of faith and stuff. This station does not currently have, um, casualty numbers from, from, um... from the human village. But it looks mostly okay from up here. And now, here's some video of the whole... mess before it started last night."

Onscreen, Hatate practically leapt from her chair and dashed away. The sound of her fumbling with something came from outside the frame. Then the video changed to a fuzzy nighttime view, with little visible except for somebody in a tengu mask glaring at the camera.

They began speaking, but Akyuu's mind was already off in its own world.

"The flooding was no worse than it was because one of the goddesses managed to stop it..." she said to herself.

Kosuzu was fixated on the video, and took a few seconds to pry her attention away. "That's kind of what it sounds like, huh?"

"And Sanae is the only reason we were able to evacuate in time last night."

"Yeah..."

One of the household's servants hurried past on some errand or another, and Akyuu caught his arm. She didn't even let him stumble to a stop before she said, "I have an important job for you."

"O-oh, Lady Hieda! Of course, what is it?"

"Find a volunteer among the staff who is willing to run to the TV station on Youkai Mountain."

The guard shifted uneasily. "On Youkai Mountain, miss? But that's—"

"They're to tell any youkai who interfere that they're on a personal errand from me, and the Hakurei shrine maiden will punish anybody who stands in their way." Akyuu had zero authority over Reimu, but as grumpy as she'd seemed earlier, she suspected that she'd welcome a fight if the opportunity arose. "When they get to the station, I want them to request the station to play the news broadcast about the flood regularly until tomorrow night."

The guard looked uncertain, but also perceptive enough to realize that this wasn't a good time to argue. "I can do that."

"Good. Thank you. And please find two servants who aren't busy with anything important and send them my way. I need them to carry messages into the village."

"Of course, Lady Hieda." The servant bowed and hurried off, presumably to avoid getting more work piled on him.

"It's always weird seeing you boss people around..." Kosuzu said, watching him go.

"It comes naturally to you after a while."

"So, er, what was that about?"

"Sanae and her shrine's goddesses saved the village twice over last night." Akyuu gave a calm smile, further plans already unfolding in her head. "It would reflect poorly on us if we didn't try to return the favor."


	11. Chapter 11

The flooded district of the human village was a very strange place, even for a kappa.

The group trudged along the muddy bottom of the newly-formed lake, down former streets and alleys. On either side of them, submerged houses stood, a few leaning strangely under the water pressure. It almost looked peaceful, if you didn't pay attention to the details—a splintered tree laid where it had fallen, spanning two rooftops. An overturned cart had been swept down the street before getting lodged in an alley. Chunks of board floated on the water's surface overhead, and Rumi slowly came to realize that they were from a house that hadn't survived the flood.

Behind them, floating on the surface, they towed a boat with their supplies. It occasionally bumped against a piece of driftwood, sending clunky echoes down the submerged streets.

As always, Touko led the way through this, shining a flashlight across the buildings to inspect them, with the beam highlighting entire galaxies of silt suspended in the water. Every now and then, she consulted with Maeri. "Never seen this place before. What'd it sell?" "Nothing but trash in this one. Not even worth our time." "Junk shop or something. Might be good for scrap."

"Think that about does it," Touko announced, after they'd been zig-zagging through the place for an hour and a half. "What do you figure, Maeri?"

"There are definitely worse areas of the village to get." A sodden scrap of cloth floated up and clung to the front of Maeri's dress, and she recoiled from it, swatting it away. She seemed too disgusted to touch half the objects down here. When she'd recovered, she said, "There are a few shops. One of the money lenders. About twenty houses. It should be a representative sample of the rest of the village."

"About what I thought," Touko said. She glanced toward the rest of the group. "Alright, no sense wastin' any more time. Let's see how much of this street we can clear tonight. Remember, we got a boat this time and no humans are rushin' us. Grab anything that's not nailed down. And if it _is_ nailed down, that just means you've gotta use your crowbar first."

Touko shot them a grin that suggested that that was a joke, and they were all supposed to laugh quite a bit. When nobody did, she scowled and moved on. "Orisa, Rumi, you two take that side. Me and Maeri will get this side. Ririsa, you bust out the metal detector and look for cash."

"Wanna be with Maeri," Orisa grumbled.

"And I _said_ you're with Rumi."

Touko held Orisa's gaze challengingly. After a few seconds, Orisa backed down. "Come on," she said, and turned toward the nearest house.

Rumi followed.

The house was in pretty good condition, considering everything it had been through. A few panels had been ripped off by the flood, but it was standing and looked more-or-less sturdy. Rumi fumbled with the fingers on her mechanical arm as she stepped in. She accidentally triggered her lighter, sending a few bubbles of gas to the surface, then swapped it out for the one she'd been looking for. Her flashlight shined in through the front door.

The inside of the house didn't look quite as tidy. It was almost completely submerged, and while that didn't look like much on the outside, it meant that on the inside, there was a thick layer of floating _stuff_ near the surface. Rumi angled her light up at it, and it took a few seconds for her eyes to pick individual items out of the bobbing mass. A barely-floating table formed the center of it, surrounded by a tangled mess of clothing. Here and there, smaller objects dotted the mass—a few apples, a couple of bottles left suspended by the air trapped inside of them... a doll.

Rumi lowered her light and glanced away. Even for a youkai, seeing an old doll floating around in the dark was creepy. It was like a universal constant.

Orisa had already made her way inside to dig through a cupboard on the wall. Inspecting the contents. one by one, she tossed the undesirables aside and tucked the few valuables under one arm. Not wanting to look lazy, Rumi crouched down by a squat cabinet and peeked inside. In the light of her flashlight, a few hints of gold and jewels glinted. Pulling it farther open, she found a small selection of hair ornaments. She wasn't sure how much they were worth, but if they had gold, Touko would want them.

Rumi pulled one out and inspected it. It was a lacquered hair stick, with a little jewel dangling on it from a chain. She curiously raised it behind her head, but she was pretty sure her hair was too short for this kind of thing now. It was just as well. The little jewel kind of reminded her of a piece of candy, and if she had to see that every time she looked in the mirror, she'd be way hungrier.

She pocketed the hair ornaments, but the distraction was no good. She could still feel the doll staring at her from above.

Rumi slowly gathered up the nerve to speak. "Hey, Orisa...?"

"Huh?"

"What, um... what are you going to do with your share of all this money?"

Orisa kept up her search, and for a few seconds, Rumi thought she planned to ignore her. She was grumbling, though, the way she always did when she was building up speed toward a larger statement. "Sew a dress for Maeri," she finally said. "Already have the plan. Devoré velvet. Mouse print. Crinoline made out of taffeta, just enough give to move naturally. Really big. Lots of ruffles. She likes them like that. Lace cuffs, Mechlin style." She gave a wistful sigh. "Lots of outside world materials. Expensive."

"Uh. Huh... I, um." Rumi glanced back toward the doll. She'd only understood about half of that, but it _sounded_ important to Orisa. "I'd thought all this would be worth it if I could get enough to pay back my debt to the other kappa, but now, I don't think so. I think... I think we shouldn't have flooded this place.

"Yeah. Nothing but junk."

"No, I mean, the whole village. Somebody used to live here..."

Orisa didn't respond, simply looking over a stack of bowls that she'd pulled from the cabinet. Rumi continued.

"Right? I mean, I know they're humans, and we eat them, but..." Rumi glanced cautiously back toward the door, and still stepped closer before she continued, lowering her voice. "All I wanted was another chance. I think Touko just likes hurting people."

Orisa slowly turned to eye her. She gave a noncommittal grunt. "You aren't wrong," she said, and turned back to her search. "Too late now, though."

"Well yeah, but...!"

"Nothing else pays good."

"We could...!" Rumi trailed off, uncertainly. Back when she lived in the main kappa hideout, she'd never had a very firm idea of where money came from. There always seemed to be a lot of it floating around. Sometimes other kappa gave it to her for things. Sometimes she gave it to other kappa for things. Only after she'd been exiled did she learn how big of a deal the other races made about it. "Make things... and sell them... Oh! You could sell dresses to people!"

"Not interested."

"But...!"

Orisa looked up from her work again. "If Touko heard you..." She trailed off, but mimed slitting her own throat. "Get back to work. Need to keep moving."

That part, Rumi couldn't argue with, but she still stood her ground for a few seconds. Then, capitulating with a sigh, she trudged over and began searching the cabinet.

* * *

 _Clunk._

The sound jolted Hatate awake, and she bolted upright, squinting blearily at a world that was only a hazy whitish blur. It took a moment longer for her to realize: A paper was stuck to her cheek with drool, and it was covering her eyes. Distastefully, she tugged it off and sat it aside. It was one of Sanae's schedules. There was no reason Sanae needed to know.

She was still in the station. She'd fallen asleep at the mixing desk.

Everything was a disaster, and Hatate hated it.

For one thing, there had been the news broadcast about the lake being bombed. She'd worked really hard on it! And her reward had been a runner from the village, asking her to do it again over and over for the next few days. Some reward.

There were also the fairies. They'd shown up early to work the camera for the day's programs, and she'd only barely managed to corral them into doing their jobs. The first show had gone okay. The second had been Rinnosuke's. Somewhere during the hour of listening to him drone on about the history of the outside world device known as the toaster, she'd... kind of drifted off, thanks to her recently-disrupted sleep schedule.

When she woke up, Rinnosuke and the fairies were gone, but there was a half-melted ice fort in one corner of the room, atop a ring of chairs.

In her hurry to clean that up before it short-circuited something important, she'd forgotten to prepare for the day's normal newscast. She didn't even realize the time was coming until Hina showed up, and it had ended up with Hina fumbling her way through a ten-minute broadcast while Hatate frantically used her camera to search for any interesting events to report.

Shortly afterward, the fairies had returned, and she'd chased them halfway down the mountain before cornering them into a spell card battle.

She'd won, but ended up covered with _something_ green-ish and sticky. One of the fairies had green hair, and Hatate was pretty sure she was some kind of a nature fairy. She liked to think that meant the substance was tree sap. The alternatives were unthinkable.

Getting the... stuff... out of her hair had taken well into the night, even with Hina's help. By the time they shut the station down for the day, it was pretty late, and she'd apparently ended up falling asleep at her desk.

And now, she was awake again. Squinting around the room, she found Hina looking at her in concern from her own desk, and Nitori standing in the doorway to the maintenance room.

Hatate scowled blearily at her. Nitori didn't seem to notice.

"Oh!" Hina said. "I didn't expect you to get up so early."

"You should have woken me up! Not like I wanted to sleep there all night." Hatate yawned and rubbed at her cheek. She could feel a line across her face where it had been smushed up against the paper. "What time is it...?"

"About eight twenty."

"... mmh..." Hatate rubbed her cheek some more, until she jolted in surprise. "We're supposed to be broadcasting stuff!"

"Jeez, relax!" Nitori said, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind her. "Hina and I got it started. It's all movies today, anyway. It should be pretty laid-back."

"I don't care about some dumb movies! I mean...! A messenger came up from the village last night. From the... child thingy!"

"The child thingy."

"Miare! The Hieda kid. I can't keep all these humans straight, cut me some slack." Hatate slumped back in her seat with a groan. "I finished that special news thing about the flood, and she wanted me to keep broadcasting it over and over so that everybody would know what's going on or whatever."

"So what? That's easy. Where's the tape? I'll even put it in for you."

"Tape...?"

"Yeah, you know? Like you put in the player?"

"You can _make_ those?!"

"Er, of course. What were..." Nitori trailed off, looking at her uncertainly. "Did you really do a live broadcast every single time?"

"Yeah! Yeah, I did! Nobody told me you could do things with... _tapes_!"

"Yeah, you can. Jeez, usually tengu are better at technology than that." Nitori crossed the room to the camera and poked a button on it. A compartment on the side folded open. "You put the tape in here, hit record, and make sure the mixing desk isn't taking its feed from the camera."

"That would have been great to know, like, a day ago."

"Well, now you know. Blank tapes are on the bottom shelf. Write something on the label so you can find it again later."

The implications slowly sank in. They weren't welcome ones at all. "Wait, you aren't sticking around?!"

"Eh? Nope, I wasn't planning on it. Why?"

"I can't run this place another day! I mean, having Hina here helps, but...! There are... ice houses and... and goo, and that shopkeeper's really boring!" She wheezed and glared at Nitori over the desk. Maybe the two nights of irregular sleep had affected her more than she'd thought.

Nitori eyed her uncertainly. "Well, too bad. It's like I told you yesterday. Catching these militia types is important."

"So is running the station!"

"Yeah, well, it's _more_ important."

"You're not even a shrine maiden or anything!" Hatate threw her hands in the air, exasperated. "Why's it have to be you who catches them?!"

Nitori froze, staring into the depths of her backpack. She spent a few seconds fidgeting with one of the clasps. She glanced between Hatate and Hina. "Well, ehe. I've actually kind of been meaning to talk to you two about that..."

The anxious response was enough to calm Hatate down a little. She sighed, but allowed herself to loosen her grip on the edge of the desk. "What about?"

"Hmm?" Hina rose from her desk and made her way over to the two. Nitori didn't say a word as she stepped past the loose ring of wards and salt that marked out her territory. If she was willing to let that slide, it really must have been important. "What is it?"

"Well, er, if I tell you, you have to keep it quiet. It isn't something I want spread around."

"Whatever, sure."

"Of course."

Hatate's agreement didn't meet Nitori's standards. "That isn't good enough! Promise or something."

"Jeez, alright, I promise or whatever."

Nitori scrutinized her face, then went back to fidgeting. "So, uh, this is probably going to sound like a dumb question, but kappa don't really... do these kind of things. In general. Or at all, really."

"Um... okay..."

"Soooo, ehe... how do you know if you have a crush on somebody?"

Hina and Hatate both looked at her in confusion for a moment. "That really isn't the question I was expecting," Hina said.

"Do you have an answer, or not?"

"Jeez, I don't know." Hatate gestured vaguely at the air. "That's kinda like asking 'what does it feel like to be warm' or 'what does red look like,' you know? You just kind of have to know. It's philosophical or whatever."

"That isn't a very useful answer," Nitori groaned. "Look." She turned to Hina, and shuffled her feet as she worked up the courage to continue. "Do you remember that letter on your show? 'Blah blah, I'm a dumbass who feels weird when I look at this human I work with'?"

"Of course I do. … are you saying that was you?"

"Um. Y-yeah, I guess it was."

"I think I understand. So, looking at Sanae makes you feel strange, and you're trying to figure out if it's romantic?"

Nitori lowered her head, miserably. She looked like she was trying to hide behind her backpack. "Something like that, yeah."

"Hey, wait!" Hatate interjected. "I thought kappa didn't do that kind of junk? … I used to know this girl who said you guys just kind of spray your eggs and stuff out into the water wherever, and that's why she never goes swimming, but my parents told me she's full of crap."

"That isn't how it works! But... yeah, kappa don't really do romance. I mean, in general. There are a few weirdos."

"But... huh. Sanae, really?"

Nitori shot her a warning glare, and Hatate scrambled to add, "She's nice and everything! She just never seemed like your type."

"I don't _have_ a type. I'm a hundred and eighty years old and I've never had to mess with this kind of thing before! But... yeah. Sanae."

"But you're not sure if you have a crush on her yet."

"Right."

Hina cleared her throat, politely working her way back into the conversation. "Nitori," she said, in a tone so patient that it was almost condescending. "Are you so determined to catch these tengu because you think it will make Sanae feel better?"

Nitori flinched at the accusation, and gave a full-body squirm. Somewhere in there, her head gave a motion that could be read as, if not a nod, a distant cousin of it.

"In that case, it's pretty safe to say that you have a crush on her. You wouldn't do that kind of thing for just anybody, would you?"

"Of course not. Sanae's special."

Hatate nodded. "I mean, I'm no romance expert or anything, but... if you ask me, if you're thinking about fighting a bunch of crazy youkai with crossbows just to make a girl happy, you've probably got a crush on her. Like, a _really_ big crush."

"A-ah, jeez!" Nitori threw her hands in the air with a sigh of exasperation. "It even _sounds_ dumb when I say it! This romance stuff is terrible, you know. I'm never going to forgive you other species for... _infecting_ me with it. You see what I mean though, right? Even if I tried to stay here, I'd barely be able to concentrate. It should be pretty quick anyway! I've got some new tricks to try today."

"But the station...! I can't run this place forever!" Hatate jabbed a finger toward the mixing desk. "There's like five billion buttons on that thing! I feel like I'm going to blow something up whenever I touch it!"

"Hey, look. I don't like it either." Seeing that Hatate wasn't convinced, Nitori sighed and crossed her arms, considering. "I'll give you each a two thousand yen bonus for covering today, okay?"

"You don't pay me to begin with!"

"Zero plus two thousand is still two thousand! … just don't tell the fairies or anything about it. I don't even want to think about them unionizing."

"I don't need a bonus," Hina said. "I'm happy just helping you work this out."

"When you talk like that, it makes me feel like my teeth are going to rot," Nitori said. "How about it, Hatate? In, or out?"

Hatate scowled and held her gaze. The thought of spending another day in the station sounded horrible, really. But, two thousand yen was two thousand yen. "Today would be the last day though, right? You're not gonna go out hunting tengu tomorrow?"

"Hey, I've got this in the bag. I got a few readings yesterday. Nothing long enough to pin down a location, but I'm getting warmer. By this time tomorrow, I'll have this whole thing wrapped up."

"Fine." Hatate sighed. "I guess we can handle it for another day."

"Ah! Great! I mean. Good. And, hey, think of it this way. If I track down those tengu, it will be the biggest news story of the year, and you'll get the first go at it."

"Uh-huh."

"Look, just be happy I'm paying you." Nitori edged open to the door and cracked it open, then glanced back to the two of them. "Just keep the lights on and I'll be happy, okay?"

"Just go already!"

Nitori didn't even bother to respond before she hurried out the door and shut it behind her.

Hatate shook her head in annoyance and glanced to Hina. "I still haven't even had breakfast, sheesh. Come on, let's go see if there's any food in here that isn't cucumbers."

* * *

Akyuu had pulled some truly impressive all-nighters in her multiple lifetimes. As Ayo, she'd once spent the better part of three days and four nights awake after establishing contact with a remote kitsune village. Anana had once gone for two days without food or rest while trying to finish a string of important articles at the end of her lifetime. Ani had, if the admittedly-hazy records from that era were to be believed, once gone on a four-day walk to the moon and back after catching Tsukiyomi's eye.

So, the fact that she'd only allowed herself three hours of sleep in the past two days was a sore point, but she'd had worse. Or at least her soul had, and that was some comfort.

The harder part was the walk. Her health occasionally kept her confined to the house under the best of circumstances, and these were not the best of circumstances. The road from the human village to the Hakurei shrine was almost all uphill, a narrow little rut through the forest that got more and more washed out every time it rained. They'd barely been walking for ten minutes before her lungs started aching. Now, she was in a cold sweat and her legs were trembling with every step. She'd definitely be paying for this later, if only in aches and pains.

She'd insisted on walking, though. It felt important to lead by example.

Behind her, forty-one people followed.

Gathering them up had been easier than she'd feared. The TV station's broadcast about the flooding had swept through the village. By the time Hatate had done her second broadcast, everybody had been eager for any drop of new information they could get. By the evening, even the refugees had been whispering about the basics—the wicked tengu responsible were still at large, the goddess who had prevented the flood from destroying the entire village had nearly paid for it with her life, and the girl who had helped them get out on time had gone into seclusion to look after her. Capitalizing on it had taken nothing except sending a few servants around to knock on doors and giving a single impassioned speech to the refugees. Before long, people had been seeking her out to ask how to join in.

And now, here they were.

Akyuu wheezed with relief as she passed through the torii in front of the Hakurei shrine. Standing ten meters past it was her target, the tiny Moriya branch shrine that had been erected here. She barely managed to stumble close to it before leaning against a tree and gesturing toward it. "The Moriya branch shrine. I'm sure that your donations and prayers would be appreciated," she announced, breathlessly. "Please form an orderly line."

As soon as the last word was out of her mouth, she half-sat, half-collapsed, leaning back against the tree for support.

"Hey, Akyuu!"

Kosuzu hurried forward through the crowd to kneel down next to Akyuu, looking over her with clear concern. "Are you okay? You look kind of..."

"Tired?"

"I was thinking 'half-dead,' but I thought that might be kind of morbid, considering... you know. Are you going to be okay?"

"Don't worry about me. Usually, the yama tries to give me a hint a few years before I'm scheduled to die. I can always send for a palanquin if I don't feel up to the trip back."

Kosuzu shrugged a bag off her shoulder and pulled a jug of water from within, offering it over. "Here."

"You brought water?"

"Well, it's no _palanquin_ ," Kosuzu said, with only the slightest hint of bitter jealously."But us lowly merchants' kids have to do a lot of walking on deliveries, you know. So sometimes we think of things that nobles might not think of, like bringing water and wearing comfortable clothes."

"Point taken."

Akyuu took a few gulps of the water, and was pleased to find that she could almost keep her hands from trembling by the end.

Behind Kosuzu, the rest of the villagers were now lined up, forming a queue that stretched from the miniature shrine down the hillside. Kosuzu glanced back at it, curious. "So do you think this will really help the goddesses at Miss Sanae's place?"

"If a god helps you," Akyuu said, and coughed a few times before stopping herself. She offered the jug back. "It's only proper to give thanks to them. Whether or not it helps should be irrelevant. A god that feels like they're being ignored will only cause trouble."

"So it isn't helping them...?"

"I don't know if it will or not," Akyuu admitted with a sigh. "I only know what was on the news, the same as you. Until Sanae can tell us otherwise, this is the best thing I could think of to help out. It gives the villagers something to focus on apart from whether or not they're going to get attacked again, too."

"I guess so. I just hope—"

Kosuzu was cut off by a voice from the shrine's steps. "What is all of this?!"

Reimu. Akyuu struggled to push herself to her feet. It took a couple of tries. "Reimu, I can explain."

"You all know the main shrine is over _there_ , right? The big building?" It was hard to tell if Reimu sounded more annoyed or sarcastic. Neither mood seemed like a pleasant one to deal with.

Akyuu weaved her way through the line of worshipers and stepped up to Reimu, gently grabbing the shrine maiden's hand and leading her away. The last thing this plan needed was Reimu actively discouraging them. "One of the Moriya goddesses was almost killed in the events of the flooding. This was the best thing I could think of to help out."

"... oh. Which one?"

"Suwako."

"It figures that it would be the less annoying one." Reimu sighed, and her eyes strayed down the length of the line. "In that case, I suppose this is okay, but it's a little rude for none of them to even consider donating to the main shrine while they're here."

"You're free to make a suggestion. _Politely_ , that is."

"Did you catch those tengu yet, miss Reimu?" Kosuzu asked cheerily as she approached the two.

"Not hardly. Marisa and I spent all day and half the night looking for them, and we didn't see a thing. … and I should probably go search again as soon as I eat." Reimu sighed and threw her hands in the air. "I don't get it, what kind of youkai starts a bunch of trouble and then doesn't come out to fight when humans show up?! There isn't any belief in it for them."

"Tengu aren't limited to such crude measures," Akyuu said. "And I'm not sure we're dealing with tengu."

"Marisa said that too. It isn't like it's easier to track down a bunch of youkai when you don't even know what species they are or what they look like, though."

"Gensokyo's society isn't that big, and a lot of youkai are unhappy about this. Somebody will let something slip sooner or later."

"If you can even trust youkai to do the right thing when it happens. For now, Marisa's trying to put together some kind of spell to track them down."

"They can't hide forever." Akyuu glanced back to the miniature shrine. About a quarter of the crowd had visited it, and it was already halfway filled with offerings. "Justice can be slow, but it arrives in its own time."

* * *

Sanae sat on the back step of the shrine, and she concentrated.

It had been two days, but the shrine still wasn't pretty. There was a big, bare spot on the side of the lake where the bomb had gone off, and while she'd covered it with dirt and smoothed it over, it was still going to be obvious for months, if not years. The land downhill from it was even worse off, with all the topsoil stripped away by rushing water.

She'd done what she could to address that. She'd brought a few dozen saplings from around the mountain and planted them up and down the slope. She'd almost gone a step further, covering it in smaller plants and calling in Minoriko to ripen them overnight, but unless she wanted the hillside covered in sweet potatoes and pumpkins, it didn't seem like the best option. Still, it was _an_ option.

Today, she'd spent half a day doing every purifying ritual she could think of, and a few she'd made up on the spot. Cleansing with salt, water, wind, light, purely spiritual endeavors to drive out any unwholesome energy that might be malingering... she'd even burnt some incense, just in case.

The hole was a spiritual wound just as much as a physical one. Like any wound, it could only heal so quickly. Sanae had more important things to attend to, anyway.

So, here she was, sitting on the step and concentrating.

It was a difficult thing, building a miracle. Especially a big one. It took days of effort, pulling divine power in and compressing it down. Slowly, it would build up into a seed of potential, and by using it at just the right moment, she could convince the universe to look away and let her break the rules for a few seconds.

A few seconds would be enough, hopefully.

She'd spent a lot of yesterday working on her miracle, and most of today. It was growing. She could feel it. Even when she'd stopped to eat it had been there, a point of energy on the edge of her awareness, begging her to use it.

Sanae was still concentrating on her miracle when something flopped down onto her head.

She jerked in surprise and hurriedly patted at her hair, trying to brush it off of her. In response, the thing shifted around. It stepped off of her head and onto her hand.

It felt like clammy leather.

Sanae squeaked and jerked backward, thrusting her hand out and shaking it to dislodge the thing. She still couldn't even see what it was, nothing but a green blur hanging onto her fingers for dear life. When it withstood a few shakes, she slowed down. The blur resolved itself into a frog.

"Um, sorry, little guy. You kind of surprised me." She stopped and pulled it in for inspection. The frog's dangling legs clawed desperately for a few seconds before it found purchase and managed to clamber up onto the back of her hand. It turned around and looked up at her with blank, froggy eyes.

" _Ribbit_."

"Look, I _said_ I'm sorry." Sanae started lowering her the frog to the ground, then paused. It was a peculiar shade of green, the greenest green she'd ever seen, like something straight out of a cartoon. It seemed to be pointedly watching her. The mottled blotches on its back looked kind of familiar, and slowly jogged a hazy memory into play. "... wait... Fortune Frog...?"

" _Ribbit_."

"Lady Suwako!"

Sanae scrambled to her feet, fumbling with the frog and clasping it to her chest. The frog wriggled in protest until it could get into a more comfortable position.

"I was so worried! I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again, and Lady Kanako's sick too, and the, the shrine, and...!"

" _Ribbit_."

Sanae raised the frog in front of herself to look it eye-to-eye. "Is this all you can do, though? Does it take more faith to make a human-sized body?"

" _Ribbit_."

"Um... okay, this isn't going to work. How about one ribbit for no, two ribbits for yes?"

" _Ribbit ribbit_."

"Great! … wait, was that in response to my suggestion, or the other question?"

This time, Suwako just stared up at her in froggy disapproval. Sanae laughed weakly and took a moment to gather her thoughts. "Sorry, um. It's been a weird few days. I'm actually kind of surprised you recovered this much so fast. Lady Kanako thought it was going to take weeks for you to manifest again."

Suwako blinked her froggy eyes.

"I guess you can only respond if I ask yes or no questions, right? Um, in that case... do you feel like you're going to be okay?"

" _Ribbit ribbit_."

"Good! Do you think you'll be able to look human again soon?"

" _Ribbit_."

"Oh... well, I guess that isn't a big surprise. Um, hmm. … how did you get better so fast, though?"

Suwako stared up at her again, and Sanae belatedly realized that she'd asked another question that wasn't addressable with frog physiology. This time, though, after some consideration, Suwako leapt out of her hand. She landed on Sanae's lap, and proceeded to climb out of that, too.

"Hey, wait...! Where are you going?"

Suwako hopped onward, a frog on a mission. She found a smaller tree and clambered her way up to perch on a branch, blinking out at the landscape.

Sanae settled in next to her, trying to get some idea of what she was looking at. After a few seconds, Suwako adjusted her heading and nodded toward the horizon.

"Oh... something in that direction?"

" _Ribbit ribbit_."

Sanae tried sketching out a mental map of Gensokyo in her head. "In the village?"

" _Ribbit_."

"Um... This is kind of fun. Like Twenty Questions, you know? Is it... hmm, is it something on the mountain?"

" _Ribbit_."

"Is it... the Hakurei shrine?"

" _Ribbit ribbit_."

"Oh, the shrine did something? Oh, wow, Reimu must have prayed a whole lot if she helped out that much...!"

Suwako just stared back at her, at the limits of self-expression for an amphibian again.

"It's really good to have you back, though...!" Sanae offered over a hand, and Suwako carefully climbed into it. "Come on, let's go tell Lady Kanako!"

* * *

They weren't dealing with tengu here. Nitori was increasingly sure of that.

She hadn't gotten back to the station until hours after the sun had set the night before, and even then, she hadn't slept. She'd pulled Sanae's recording of the night of the bombing, and spent about an hour watching it and rewinding, taking in the little details.

She'd suspected it for days. Tengu loved a good fight, and however those houses had been launched into the air, it hadn't sounded much like tengu abilities when Sanae had described it. The video just confirmed her suspicions. The militia members were too short to be tengu. There _were_ tengu that short, but you'd be hard-pressed to find that many of them in one place. It was weird for a group of tengu to all use crossbows, and the crossbows in question had been particularly interesting, big, elaborate things that looked more complicated than anything the tengu were going to manufacture themselves.

There were only a few species in Gensokyo who fit all of those criteria. Mostly, it gave her the uneasy suspicion that she was dealing with other kappa.

She'd already stopped by the main hideout and spread the word that she'd pay well for any clues to the culprits. Now, she was hovering over Genbu Ravine, looking for a good spot to pick up her search from the day before.

She'd done some construction while she was at the station, too, using a few spare components and a lot of scrap metal. The result was three collapsible antennas atop tripods. Finding a good spot near the head of the ravine, she set up two of them, planting them on narrow ledges high above the valley floor. A wire dangled between them, stretching across the gap and swaying in the breeze. It trailed after her as she levitated up to a third ledge and shrugged the final tripod to the ground. It unfolded, and its antenna extended into the air.

The radio receiver she'd carried the day before had a few new additions, too. She'd pulled out some of its guts, leaving them dangling by the side, where she'd wired in a complicated series of lights and wires, all clustered around a small dangling circuit board. There was an adapter hanging at one end of this mess, and she plugged the cord from the antennas into it. Low static came from the receiver as it was connected to the antennas, each one larger than the receiver itself, let alone its tiny antenna.

Nitori sat down on the ledge, and she waited.

* * *

Walking back toward the village, the crowd was calmer and more subdued. The trip to the Hakurei shrine, the sort of thing that most of the participants might otherwise only do once every year or two, was behind them. Now, there was nothing left except the relatively unexciting walk back home.

Akyuu was glad. She felt like she needed as much leeway as she could get. Even hobbling along behind the others, pacing herself, she could tell that she was going to be regretting this tomorrow.

"Akyuu?" Kosuzu said, as she hung back to draw even with her. "You still aren't feeling well, huh..."

"I'm fine," Akyuu said, too breathless to be convincing. "It's nothing out of the ordinary."

"I never realized your condition was so fragile."

"I just need to pace myself," Akyuu said, and tried to change the subject. "Did you want something?"

"Oh, um, well. Have you heard the new rumor that's going around?"

"I don't hear many rumors in general. What is it?"

"They say—"

"Which 'they'?"

"... mister Daigo and some of the merchants. They think the flooded part of the village is _haunted_!"

"And what makes them say that?"

"A few people said they saw lights moving around in the flooded area last night. Weird creepy ghost lights. Not just a candle or something." Kosuzu visibly shivered at the prospect, then leaned in and lowered her voice conspiratorially. "They think that somebody must have gotten killed in the flooding, and now their ghost is wandering around the haunted district waiting to take revenge..."

Akyuu drew to a stop and considered this. "It isn't a ghost," she said, after a moment's thought.

"Huh? What makes you say that?"

"There aren't many ghosts that make lights to begin with. For a ghost to do something like that, they'd also need to be pretty old and powerful. The ghost of somebody who died two nights ago isn't going to be that powerful yet, let alone haunting the village looking for revenge. There's a good chance that they wouldn't even realize they're dead yet."

Kosuzu looked like she wasn't sure whether to be relieved, or annoyed that Akyuu had dispelled her budding urban legend so easily. "Well... maybe it's some other youkai or something, but they still said they saw lights out there. There aren't many humans who could do that kind of thing, right? Especially on three meters of water in the middle of the night."

"It would pose some problems to most humans, yes," Akyuu conceded. "You know that the right time to bring this up would have been when we were talking to Reimu, right?"

"I didn't really hear about it until we were left," Kosuzu said, glancing aside sheepishly.

"The adults have even less of an excuse."

"Ehe. I guess so. … do you think we should go back?"

"I'm not sure I could _make_ it there and back," Akyuu said with a sigh. Noticing that the villagers were almost out of sight over the next ridge, she started walking, coaxing as much speed as she could out of her shaking muscles. "It's probably nothing. Just some kids or minor youkai who decided to have some fun poking around."

"It's still pretty creepy, though... it's weird to think about something that mysterious in the middle of the village."

Akyuu eyed her. "You're thinking of checking it out tonight, aren't you?"

"Ah?!" Kosuzu jerked back. "Well, um, I'm not sure what gave you that idea, but..."

"You're predictable, sometimes."

Kosuzu sighed. "I was thinking about it," she admitted, then gave a sheepish smile. "I've been working around Suzunaan almost since I was old enough to walk. I'm not sure what else to do with all of this free time."

"Something that isn't investigating youkai." Kosuzu's expression only faltered slightly. Akyuu was the first to give in. "... if I can't change your mind, then at least wait until tomorrow. I'm not going to be in any shape to go anywhere tonight, but I'll go with you if you can wait until then."

"Really?"

"At least then I'll know that you aren't going to do anything foolish. But if I even think that there might be an actual youkai or ghost involved, we're leaving and sending for Reimu."

"Oh, right! I really don't want to deal with an angry youkai by myself..."

"Good. Now hurry up. The others will leave us behind at this rate."


	12. Chapter 12

After arriving back in the village, Kosuzu had only a few things to take care of. She stopped in to see her parents, so that they knew she'd returned from the trip safely. She watched the news over dinner. There still wasn't any new information on the people behind the flood, and the goddess presenting it—Hina?—looked just a little frazzled.

And then, once she saw an opening, she snuck out to Suzunaan for a few supplies.

By the time she returned, night was approaching. She didn't dare to stop by to see if her parents had realized she was missing, but headed straight for Akyuu's private quarters. As she slipped in, she didn't even have a chance to announce herself before Akyuu looked up. "A yukata?" she said, before glancing back down to the book in front of herself. "It isn't a festival day, you know."

The yukata had been the main thing she'd wanted to grab. Her parents had bought it for her for some festival a year or two ago, and it still more or less fit. She twirled to show it off. "Do you like it? It's for tonight."

"... for _ghost-hunting_?"

"Right! Since it's black. I thought it would be good... you know. For sneaking."

"It has cherry blossoms on it."

"It was still the darkest thing I own... and!" Kosuzu raised her bag and produced the other items. "I brought a lantern in case we need to investigate things, and a telescope, so we can look at things without getting too close."

"You really did think of everything, didn't you?"

Kosuzu had known Akyuu long enough to tell when the Child of Miare was trying not to sound too condescending. This was definitely one of those times. She huffed and slid the bag back onto her shoulder. "It's there if we need it!" she said. "Besides, I'll be the one carrying it. I'd feel bad making you carry things, after earlier. Do you feel better?"

"I'll be sore in the morning, but it's cool outside and the village is pretty flat. I should be fine." Akyuu's expression thawed. "I guess that means you're ready to go, doesn't it?"

"Whenever you are."

Akyuu glanced down to her book—Kosuzu had long harbored a suspicion that she just memorized what page she was on rather than use bookmarks—and slid it shut, then rose from the table. "Let's get to it, then."

"You don't need to make any preparations?"

"If we don't find any ghosts, I won't need anything. If we do find ghosts, nothing that I could bring would make much difference."

"It sounds really dangerous when you put it like that..."

"If it's a ghost, it _is_ dangerous. Remember, we're just going to take a look, and if we find anything, we're leaving. I've already been killed by youkai in two lifetimes. I'd rather not add a third." Akyuu sighed to herself and stepped over to open the room's rear door. Outside the gardens were barely lit in the rapidly-fading sunlight. "Now, let's get this over with."

* * *

Tonight, the human village was active. It was the busiest Kosuzu had ever seen it after sunset apart from festivals, and it took her a while to figure out why—for every person who'd stayed home out of the fear of youkai, there was another who had been roused out of their house by it.

She saw more than a few weapons in the small crowds that they passed.

As they got closer to the flooded area of the village, though, things grew quieter. Even barely within sight of the water, many of the houses were dark and quiet, their residents temporarily living elsewhere. Those who had stayed were mostly shut indoors. It was one thing to stand brave against unseen youkai in the middle of the village. It was another thing entirely to do it when you were so close to the result of a youkai attack.

Before long, the light from the rest of the village was only a dim glow peeking between houses. In the darkness, the flooded area looked even spookier than it did in the daytime. The water rippled gently with unseen currents, sending sheets of silver moonlight cascading across its surface. Only by focusing on them could she make out the spots that were never illuminated, the silhouettes of roofs and walls that still peeked above the surface. Focusing even more, and her mind almost convinced itself that there was movement in the depths.

Kosuzu shivered and turned away from the water. "Do you think I should pull out the lantern?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I'd prefer not to draw attention to ourselves if we don't have to," Akyuu whispered back.

"That's... probably a good idea, yeah." Kosuzu pulled her bag closer to herself and wondered if she could use the telescope as a club in emergencies.

They stood in silence for another minute or two. "It looks really creepy," she added, when she couldn't stand it anymore.

"You're the one who wanted to come out here." Akyuu sighed. "If we're going to investigate it, we should at least be thorough. Let's walk around the edge of the water, at least."

"Right..."

Akyuu led the way, and Kosuzu followed. She felt guilty for letting Akyuu, sickly and with an already-short lifespan, lead the way into potential danger. She didn't feel guilty enough to step out in front, though.

The path they had to take was a crooked, winding one. In places, the edge of the water intersected houses. In others, it zig-zagged across steep slopes or had pushed down trees or walls at its edge. At one point, they had to arc around an entire offshoot of it that had made a small pond connected to the larger mass of water.

"How long do you think it's going to be like this?" Kosuzu whispered.

"Marisa has been negotiating to get the kappa to drain the water. Even if not, the soil around here won't hold it forever. It will drain away in a month or two."

"Huh... how do you know so much about it?"

"This isn't the first time the village has flooded this badly. The last time was just three hundred years ago."

"... oh."

Here, the edge of the water passed along the edge of a tightly-packed neighborhood. The neighborhood extended into its mass, with a tidy procession of houses growing more and more submerged until only the upper slopes of the roofs showed above the surface. The collected wood softly groaned into the night as the water sloshed against it. It was, in Kosuzu's opinion, the creepiest thing ever.

It got even worse when she noticed a glow coming from underwater.

She drew to a stop to stare at it.

On the surface of the water, there was a single dimly glowing patch. It drifted across the surface, and where it met a house wall, it grew brighter, trailing up and down to illuminate most of its front. Afterward, it flicked back over to illuminate a small, wooden boat, floating on the surface.

Silhouetted against the light, the boat was incredibly unsettling. Nobody was sitting in it, but it still rocked gently, drifting against the weak current that stirred the water.

The light drifted away after a few seconds, and Kosuzu finally found it in herself to whimper, "Akyuu..."

"I see it." Akyuu stepped forward and crouched down at the edge of the water, peering at it. "It isn't a ghost, though."

"Really...?"

"Well, it could be a ghost, but one that indistinct would be really old. Far too old to have died in the flood."

"That isn't really relieving...!"

"It isn't, no..." Akyuu glanced back toward the water, frowning thoughtfully. "With the way it's traveling back and forth, it almost looks like it's coming from underwater..."

"Huh... Do you think it's g—"

Something made a loud _thump_ from the darkness, and Kosuzu's mouth locked shut with a squeak. She glanced back to the boat just in time to see a shadowed figure slip back into the water. Behind it, in the boat, it had left a full-looking sack.

Akyuu took a slow, careful step back from the waterline, not taking her eyes off the boat for a moment. "Whatever it is, we should let Reimu know. She can sort it out."

 _Let Reimu sort it out._ It was the most welcome thought Kosuzu had encountered since they'd gotten here. "Right! We found what we came for," she said, and took a few hurried steps away from the water, ducking around the corner to put a nice, opaque wall between her and whatever had been in that boat. Black yukata or not, she suddenly felt very obvious standing on the shore. "We s-should really get going..."

"Right. Slowly, though. We don't want to attract any attention." Akyuu eased her way over to join Kosuzu behind the wall. "You were right, though. I'm honestly surprised."

"What's so surprising about that?"

"How often does it happen?"

"It... hey! I'm right a lot of the time!"

In the darkness nearby, something gave a dull, but lethal-sounding, click. A wicked shape rose from the shadows, the moonlight faintly reflecting off of its surface to trace out the barest contours of a crossbow. The wielder chuckled. "Two kids. Really."

They both froze, staring at the figure in the shadows. Kosuzu's mind slowly picked out the gleam of a bolt-point near the tip of the crossbow, and she fixated on that, instead. She whimpered.

Akyuu, somehow, kept her calm, even while raising her hands in surrender. "Who are you?"

"Somebody who really didn't want to find anybody up here," the bow-wielder sighed. She raised her voice. "Hey, boss! You were right. There were two of them. Just kids, though."

"Keep your voice down, dumbass!" somebody shouted back, only slightly quieter.

"Want me to take care of them?"

"Look, I don't know what you're here for," Akyuu said. "But I'm the Child of M—"

"I don't care whose kid you are," the bow-wielder said.

"Nah," the other voice shouted again. "Bring 'em here. Let's have a look at 'em."

"You heard the boss-lady." The shadow stepped forward, and in the moonlight, Kosuzu got her first good look at her. She was short, even shorter than Kosuzu.

She wore the uniform of a kappa.

"Time to get moving. Go on, toward the water. You can run, but you won't accomplish much but giving me target practice."

* * *

Morning came to Gensokyo. Nitori kind of wished it hadn't.

She'd gotten back to the station pretty late the night before, and she still hadn't been able to fall asleep. There was a lot to think about. There was a lot to think about by _kappa_ standards, which meant three or four things on top of the usual pile of schematics and mechanisms that she thought up every night while she was trying to sleep. There was the whole thing with Sanae, for one. And the tengu situation. Also, the TV station, which was really going to need some maintenance and basic admin work if Hatate and Hina ran it alone for much longer. … Hatate sort of seemed like she needed some maintenance, herself.

The issues with the station and Hatate, those could wait. She'd already talked Hatate into running the station for another day, with the promise of a permanent salary moving forward. The tengu and Sanae... those needed immediate attention.

In her hands, Nitori had an old topographical map of Gensokyo, onto which she'd scrawled dozens of messy notes and diagrams. They were the results of her search for the tracking device. Fifteen readings, from nine different locations. They were plotted in a series of marks across the map, an X on each one. Around them, she'd sketched her attempts at guessing the position of the tracking device, based on a few different methods. Circles arced around the marks, and lines jutted out of them. A few of them veered off of the edge of the map. Most of the rest, though, drew together, making one spot into a forest of criss-crossing lines.

The spot was right over the flooded area of the human village.

Nitori peered over the map as she walked, double-checking the calculations. Most of the math was hard enough to do with a calculator in hand, let alone in her head. She'd already fretted over it the night before, anyway. It was as good as it was going to get.

Or, at least, she hoped so. She really hoped so, since the Moriya shrine was already in sight.

She decided to get this over with as quickly as possible. She approached the shrine and knocked on the door.

No answer. After a few seconds, she tried again. Still nothing.

She tried a third time, and the door slid away beneath her knuckles, leaving Kanako looming over her.

Kanako had a frog sitting on her shoulder, at about the right jaunty angle to make it look like she was a very confused pirate.

"Oh, Nitori," Kanako said. "Good morning."

The frog looked over her judgmentally. " _Ribbit,_ " it said, looking to Kanako.

Kanako glanced to it, giving a half-smirk. "Is that so?"

" _Ribbit._ "

Nitori finally remembered how to speak. "Er... is what so?"

"She says that you're here to see Sanae," Kanako said.

"How the heck does some frog know that?"

" _Ribbit._ "

"She says it's because you're courting her."

Nitori reddened. "I'm not courting anybody!"

"Well, should you change your mind, our Sanae is quite a catch." Kanako crossed her arms and looked down at her. "You _are_ here to see her, though?"

"Yeah, I am."

"You'll have to wait. She's been meditating for most of the past two days."

"... er, meditating? I thought that was a...?" Nitori waved a hand vaguely in the air as she tried to sort the religions out in her head. She had a decent outline of Shinto in her head, but the rest, she could only tell apart because they shouted different things when they tried running her out of town. "... Buddhist thing?"

"She's creating a miracle. A very big one. It takes time and concentration."

"Oh. Uh." Nitori paused for a few seconds, while she resisted the urge to ask exactly how that worked. "Yeah, well. Miracle or not, she's going to want to see this."

She fumbled the map open and held it up. Kanako glanced down at it skeptically. "What is this?"

"It's a map of tracking bug readings. I found those tengu who bombed your lake the other day. Is _that_ a good enough reason for you?"

Kanako stared down at it in surprise. Her expression slowly softened into a smirk, and she glanced to the frog. "You were right," she said. "She really is good for something."

"Good for—hey!"

" _Ribbit,_ " said the frog.

Kanako stepped away from the door way and cupped a hand to her mouth. "Sanae! You have a visitor!"

* * *

On the edge of the flooded district, the kappa had claimed a building for their local base of operations.

It was a pub. It was one of the village's few two-story buildings, and as luck would have it, its second floor was now just a few centimeters above the water. On one side, it opened up into a wide balcony, which was the perfect spot to haul stolen goods up out of the boat. They'd converted it into a temporary warehouse for now, a place to stash everything that was too big to haul back to the cave just yet, and the stuff that needed to dry out first.

Since humans had a bad tendency of not making things waterproof, that was a lot of stuff. They'd gone through the place the first night, tearing out the walls that weren't load-bearing and tossing all the less valuable furniture out into the water. As a result, the upper floor was mostly a single open loft, into which they'd started piling looted goods.

And in the corner, they'd stashed the two human captives. Handcuffed and in a building in the middle of a lake, there wasn't much chance of them going anywhere, but Touko had still instructed Maeri to stand guard over them with a crossbow just in case.

They were two girls. Rumi was pretty certain they were young ones. It was hard to tell with humans, because they grew up so fast that sometimes it seemed like they died just when they were getting to the good parts. One of the girls, she recognized as the shopkeeper from Suzunaan. The shopkeeper was half-curled against the wall, glancing between the assorted kappa warily. The other one...

The other girl was kneeling with her cuffed hands folded in her lap, like she was patiently waiting for an opening to speak.

Rumi felt like she might be waiting for a while. The kappa had been arguing on and off ever since they'd caught them.

"Point is," Ririsa said, "killing more humans is attention we don't need right now. I've already seen mermaids poking around four or five times. If they see fresh bodies floating around, they'll get suspicious." She paused. "... maybe if we dumped them into the river downstream..."

In the corner, the shopkeeper girl gave a low whimper.

Maeri said, "It isn't a matter of where we dump them, it's a question of whether we should even consider it in the first place! I really don't think murder should be our first course of action here."

"Because Maeri's too chickenshit to kill two humans," Touko added.

"They're... they're _children_."

"Kids can mess this up for us just as easy as adults." Touko gave a sharp-edged grin and added, "But, nice thing is, the bodies are easier to carry off once you take care of 'em."

"I, um." Rumi barely squeaked the syllables out. Every eye in the room turned toward her, and she immediately regretted it. "I... I'm with Maeri. It would be really bad to kill them if we don't need to...! No, um, even if we need to!"

"Oh, well, if Rumi thinks it'd be _bad_ , we'd better pack up and go home."

Rumi pouted, and silence fell over the room for a few seconds. The second captive, the girl with violet hair, cleared her throat ever-so-softly to get their attention before she spoke. "If I may?"

Touko glared at her, but said nothing to stop her. The girl continued. "My name is Hieda no Akyuu. I am the ninth Child of Miare. Once my servants realize that I've gone missing, the Hakurei shrine maiden will get involved. If you were to kill me, the yama might get involved, too."

"And why am I supposed to believe that?" Touko asked.

A few seconds passed in silence. Orisa spoke first. "Fancy clothes. Silk. Probably a noble."

"She does look like the Child of Miare," Maeri added quickly. "I saw her once. A picture of her, I mean. In the newspaper."

"It'd piss off the shrine maiden for sure," Ririsa said. "Even more than flooding the village, I mean."

Touko groaned. "You're breakin' my heart, girls." Frowning to herself, she leaned against the wall, arms crossed pensively. After a few seconds, she announced, "Alright, here's how it's gonna go. We don't have to make a decision right now. If the shrine maiden's gonna be poking around, we need to keep our heads down, so we're holed up in here all day anyway. Once the sun's down... well, by then, if we don't have a good, _solid_ reason for these kids to live, we'll be able to dump the bodies wherever we want. Understand?"

Most of the kappa answered in a round of unenthusiastic mumbles. Ririsa was the only one who spoke up. "Got it, boss."

"Good. Ririsa, Orisa, let's get some rest. Need to be well-rested if the shrine maiden's gonna be around. Maeri and Rumi... since you're so keen on keeping these kids alive, think you just signed yourselves up for a whole shift of watching them."

The three kappa headed off to the back of the building, where some of the more nap-worthy furniture had been stashed, with only the slightest delay as Orisa got a bedtime kiss from Maeri. Rumi gave a sigh of relief.

With the conversation gone, the house was eerily silent. The water sloshed gently beneath them, and occasional changes in the current made the entire structure groan. Rumi was no architect, but she was pretty sure that before long, the houses would start collapsing. Humans didn't really build stuff to hold up in three meters of water.

The only other sound was the shopkeeper girl, sniffling to herself as she tried to stay calm. With a sigh, Maeri pulled up a chair and sat down across from them, her crossbow laying in her lap. Rumi joined her, after a few seconds of deliberation.

"Thank you for defending us," the Child of Miare said.

"Some things are too far," Maeri said. "Even... even for Touko. That's too much."

Rumi nodded in firm agreement. "I really don't want to hurt anybody else..."

"But there's no hope of convincing you to let us go, I'm guessing?"

The kappa took longer to answer this time. "Um, probably not," Rumi said, glancing aside guiltily. "Touko's really mean, and if she found out, she'd, um..."

"... do some very terrible things to us," Maeri finished for her.

"A _lot_ of them. With, um, bombs and guns and knives and... …" Rumi paused to think of scary-sounding things she'd heard other kappa talk about. "... solenoids."

"I think I understand, yes," Akyuu said, with only the faintest hint of sarcasm. "It sounds like we're both in rough situations."

Rumi nodded glumly.

"Please forgive me if I don't sound as sympathetic as I could, though, since you have weapons pointed at us."

At being reminded of that, the shopkeeper girl's crying intensified, punctuated with a low wail. Her friend turned back to her, giving her a few placating pats on the shoulder.

Again, Rumi averted her gaze, sighing to herself. The day couldn't end soon enough.

* * *

The walk down the mountainside was mostly silent, and Nitori wasn't sure if she should interrupt it or not.

It felt like Sanae needed it, mostly. She'd been fine up until they got far enough down Youkai Mountain to see the human village. In the daytime, the flooded area was impossible to miss, a glittering mirror that just happened to have dozens of buildings sticking up from its surface. Sanae had definitely seen it. She'd drawn to a stop for a few seconds to stare at it before moving on, and Nitori was pretty sure it had been four or five seconds before she'd managed to tear her eyes away.

It was stuff like this that made her reluctant to say too much to Sanae. She was pretty cool, but she was still a human, when you got down to it. It wasn't that she was high-maintenance. It was just that she had certain needs that kappa tended to take care of for themselves. Well, um, not like that. Okay, like that, but also in _other_ ways.

Like this lake business. Nitori was still pretty sure that Sanae felt guilty about what had happened. 'Guilty' wasn't really a mode that most youkai had, let alone kappa. Personally, if somebody had nearly killed two of Nitori's friends, Nitori would have been furious. Instead of her antenna project, she probably would have spent the past week working on some kind of automatic howitzer, so that when she finally tracked down the people responsible, she could make the outcome very public. That was how youkai did things. Don't get mad, get even, and make sure that everybody learns that it's a bad idea to mess with you.

Nitori was still pretty new at dealing with humans, but Sanae didn't seem to have reached the howitzer-building stage of grief yet. Mostly, she just seemed distracted and sad.

Something had to be done.

"So, uh...!" Nitori finally managed, when they were making their way into the outskirts of the village. "It's a pretty nice day for a walk."

"Huh?" Sanae glanced up, snapped away from... whatever she'd been thinking about. Nitori had a pretty good idea. "Oh. Right! I guess it is, huh?"

Nitori nodded, while internally panicking. She couldn't remember who had told her that weather was an automatic conversation-starter with humans, but she had half a mind to punch them in the face next time they met.

She calmed herself down again. This was Sanae she was talking to. If Sanae were just some regular human, she wouldn't even care what she thought in the first place. "So, uh. Did you know Hatate mostly ran the station while you were out?"

"Huh. She did?"

"Yeah. I was pretty happy. I mean, Hina helped, but I'm surprised whenever a tengu manages to tie their shoes without bragg—" She stopped. _Bad Nitori_. That wasn't the conversation they were having right now. "Ehe. What I mean is, she did a pretty good job. Considering that we kind of threw her into it."

"That's pretty surprising. I'm glad." Sanae gave the first ghost of a smile that Nitori had seen on her all day.

Emboldened, Nitori pushed onward. "I'm thinking I might make her the assistant manager or whatever. I don't really like to admit it, but... I'm not really good at a lot of this stuff. I mean, I know how to make money and all, but you're the one who figured out how to make people actually want to watch the station. Without you around, I'd probably just be messing it up and showing a bunch of stuff nobody cares about."

"It's not that hard! You would have figured it out eventually."

"Nope! Never. I don't think you get how much of it you've done. I really don't think I could have pulled it off without you. You've been a really big help. So... thanks, Sanae."

Nitori was left flushing furiously, and it wasn't helped when Sanae shot her a teasing smile. "You sound like you're giving some big dramatic final speech in a movie or something! Um, you know the kind? Like in Return of the Jedi! Remember, we saw that one the other day? Where Luke tells his sister that he's going to go fight Darth Vader, and—"

"Er, I remember it, yep. I'm not going anywhere, though."

"Well, good! And... running things has been pretty fun. I'm glad you asked me."

"Good!"

And things went silent again.

Nitori nearly tripped over herself in her attempt to keep what little momentum she'd built up going. "But, ehe, that's not really... why I said it. Um. I mean. I guess... what I'm trying to say is..." She glanced away, fidgeting with the straps to her backpack. "My point is... You're... pretty great, for a human. Er, not just 'pretty' great, _really_ great. A-and, um. Um. I'm not... really sure how this kind of thing works with humans. But if you're... okay with me kind of messing it up until I figure it out... and, I mean, just." She felt like there were four separate trains of thought crashing in her head, in both slow motion and one giant rush of catastrophic action, and she was lucky just to keep stringing words together in an order that mostly make sense. "If you want to. Me and you. We could..."

"Oh," a voice interrupted from above them. "I didn't know you two were coming down."

Reimu hovered down in front of the two, and Sanae gave her a wave. "Oh! Reimu! Hiya!" She glanced back to Nitori. "Er, Nitori, you were saying?"

Nitori stared at Sanae blankly. All the words seemed to have left her. "Eh? A-ah, don't worry about it, it... wasn't anything important."

"Oh... alright." Sanae gave Nitori a quizzical look, then glanced back to Reimu. "I didn't think you'd be down here so early, though."

"I guess you didn't hear, then." Reimu settled onto the ground with a sigh and slung her gohei over her shoulder. "Akyuu and Kosuzu went missing last night. … if it was only Kosuzu, I'd think she was just up to a bad idea or something, but Akyuu... Her servants say that she never stays out overnight without leaving word with them. So, either Akyuu went out, had one of her health episodes, and passed out somewhere, or something else is going on. Either way, since it's the Child of Miare, nobody is going to let me rest until it's resolved."

Nitori glanced to Sanae. "Think it could be related?"

"Oh... um, maybe."

"Related to what?" Reimu asked.

"Nitori thinks those tengu are hiding out in the flooded area," Sanae said. "She tracked them down here, and if a bunch of dangerous youkai are hiding out in the village, and then somebody from the village goes missing..."

Reimu looked toward the water. "I was kind of wondering if that was related, myself."

Sanae clenched a fist resolutely by her side. A confident smile grew on her face, and she gave a firm nod. "I'm going to fix it, then!"

"Huh? Fix what?"

"You'll see!" Sanae took a few steps away before whirling around and grinning toward the two. "It's going to be really cool! Um, please make sure no villagers get close, though! It could be a little dangerous!"

"What are you _doing_?"

"A miracle!" Sanae called back. It was all the answer Reimu got, since Sanae soon took off into the air, hovering out over the water.

Reimu shot Nitori a questioning glance. Nitori just shrugged. "It's kind of relieving knowing that other humans can't figure out what's going through her mind, either."

* * *

Sanae hovered up, and up, and up, until the air cooled down and she could see the entire flooded area stretching out below her. From this angle, the water reflected the sunlight straight up at her, illuminating everything above it and threatening to blind her when she looked down.

She took a deep breath. From within her heart, she drew out her miracle.

Sanae had only really used a few miracles before. Real ones, at least, not the tiny tricks she pulled out now and then to impress her friends and worshipers. As a teenager in the outside world, she'd caused a meteor shower and gotten an hour-long lecture from Kanako as the nation's astronomers scrambled to explain it. She'd parted the river in the human village once, during one of her earlier attempts at getting more faith for the shrine. She'd grown a sapling into the tallest tree on Youkai Mountain for a ceremony to seal the shrine's cooperation with the tengu.

Those miracles had all been amazing, but she was intent on making this her best one yet. Like all of them, it was a wonderful, inexplicable thing, the ability to make the impossible possible. She had to focus to draw its power forth. The wonderful rush of energy flooded her body and almost overwhelmed her, leaving her lightheaded from the potential. It bubbled inside of her, the power to move mountains and shift the stars. She raised her hand, and the universe held its breath.

Sanae swung her onusa in a wide arc. Green sparks trailed from its tip.

She stumbled and danced through the air like a drunken ballerina, weaving the miracle into the fabric of reality. Long, glowing contrails of energy traced out her motions behind her. Below, the surface of the water began to slowly rise and fall, like the chest of a sleeping giant. The motions intensified. The water trembled, and then roiled in place.

A drop of water shot up and splattered against Sanae's leg. Another dribbled against her arm, and a third caught her on the cheek.

The slow progression of droplets sped up, becoming a drizzle and still picking up speed.

The floodwater began to fly upward, a great wall of water that blotted out the ground. Halfway through its journey to the sky, it rushed past her, barely parting enough to avoid sweeping her up in the current. The world disappeared, cloaked in roiling water and drowned out by a catastrophic roar.

Sanae kept dancing.

* * *

The worst part of standing guard, Rumi had decided, was that it was boring.

Well, no, that wasn't the worst part. It was easily in the top ten, though. The _worst_ part was that there was no good way to stand in one place with her crossbow that didn't get uncomfortable after ten minutes or so. She'd cycled through every position she could think of, slinging it over her shoulder, cradling it in her arms, and letting it dangle by her side, and every single one left her arms stiff after a while.

The second-worst part was the bits that weren't boring. The Child of Miare had tried sneaking off once while Rumi and Maeri were distracted, and they'd had to herd her back to the corner. It had made Rumi feel like a real jerk. Which was the third-worst part: the guilt. Even compared to blowing up people's houses, there was a certain jerkiness to holding children hostage that really didn't make Rumi feel good about herself.

The hostages seemed to have picked up on this fact.

"It looks like your boss is asleep," the Child of Miare said. "If you let us go now, you could say that we ran away while you were distracted."

"We're in the middle of a lot of water," Rumi said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"You have a boat. We could take that."

"I don't think you could untie it without waking them up, though..."

"Nobody's leaving here. At least, not yet," Maeri said. She'd taken up position on one of the many dressers that had already been in the inn, with one of her ubiquitous notebooks spread out in front of her. She didn't even look up as she spoke. "Do we really have to go over this again?"

"I really don't want to die here," the shopkeeper girl whimpered.

"You wouldn't die _here_ anyway," Maeri said boredly, thumbing to the next page in her book. She jotted a note in the margin. "It's a lot easier to pull shirikodama out underwater."

The girl let out a low moan of despair. Rumi cringed.

Before the conversation could repeat itself for the hundredth time, the entire building groaned. It had been doing it all day, jostled around by small changes in the water's currents, but this was a forceful one, a loud, jarring rumble that came from every direction at once. Rumi could feel it in her chest.

Slowly, it tapered off, leaving all four of them staring at the walls in surprise. "What _was_ that?!" Maeri hissed, to nobody in particular.

"It sounded like a bear," Rumi said. "That's how I think a bear would sound, I mean. I've never seen one."

"It wasn't a bear," Maeri sighed.

"Bears don't sound like that," the Child of Miare agreed.

Rumi pouted. "I didn't say it _was_ a bear. Just that it sounded like—"

The earthshaking groan returned. This time, it started low, and built up in pitch and volume. Throughout the building, the walls creaked in protest. It sounded like the entire building was being slowly crushed in a gigantic fist. Rumi clutched her crossbow to her chest and flinched, waiting for the entire thing to collapse around her.

The pressure released in an instant, though, and the whole building squealed as the walls relaxed back into their original position.

"What in the hell is going on out there?!" Touko shouted, well before she was in sight. She rounded the corner, rubbing at one eye and glaring at the world in general with the other.

"We don't... we don't really know," Maeri stammered, as she scrambled to grab her bow and stand at attention. "It just started making noise."

"Well, we probably oughta find out, don't you think?"

"I—yes."

Rumi nodded mutely along with Maeri.

Outside, a low hiss, like a heavy breeze, filled the air. Over several seconds, it built up to a loud roar that threatened to drown out all speech.

"Alright, that does it," Touko said, and hefted her crossbow up into her hands. She crossed the room to the door that opened out onto the balcony, which they'd been using as the dock for their boat. "Maeri!" she shouted back. "Come open this thing!"

"Right...!" Maeri hurried over and fumbled with the door for a moment, then cautiously pushed it halfway open.

Outside, the world was in chaos. Raindrops filled the air, so thick that she couldn't even see the buildings across the street. The surface of the water was roiling furiously, like a pan set to boil on top of a volcano.

They stared at it in confusion for a few seconds before the image clicked in Rumi's mind—it wasn't raining. The floodwater was falling up, back into the sky.


	13. Chapter 13

It had been fifteen minutes since the unnatural reverse-rainfall began. It was still going, a deafening roar like static inside Rumi's head.

More worrying, though, were its effects. Maeri had been the first one to notice—the water level was going down. Ten minutes after the rain had started, the water had already gone down most of a meter, baring four steps on the inn's stairway. The uncovered walls were bone dry, like they hadn't been wet in ages. As the group watched, the water had sank down past another step over the course of a few minutes.

The last time they'd checked, the water was barely a meter deep, and it was still falling. It called for action, but nobody could agree on what.

"We board up the doors," Ririsa said. "I've got everything we need in my bag. Hole ourselves up in here, and no humans are getting in until we're ready to let them in, or they bring an axe."

"And then?" Touko retorted. "Don't you think they might find it just a touch suspicious that somebody boarded up a building from the inside while the whole place was flooded? They get the shrine maiden out there, and we're as good as sitting ducks."

"We sneak out," Maeri said. "It's daytime, but there probably won't be humans here just yet. If we go now, there's still enough water to hide us, and we—"

"You're forgettin' something," Touko said. "We've got hostages, too."

Maeri glanced back at them. "Are you suggesting that we use them as a bargaining chip, or...?"

"No, I'm sayin' it might be awful slow sneaking out if we've got to keep an eye on two humans the whole way. … it's probably the best chance we've got, though. So. We kill the kids and dump the bodies, _then_ sneak out before humans start comin' in."

Maeri paled. "There... has to be a way without doing that."

"Yeah? Well now, let's hear it."

"The boat," Orisa said. "Can't swim with handcuffs."

"Not sure if a boat's gonna float on whatever the hell's happenin' out there," Touko said. "Besides, some shirikodama would be a good snack for the road."

"Even if we did that," Maeri said, "leaving their bodies here would be mean that there's no way the shrine maiden wouldn't—"

The shopkeeper girl had been sniffling all along. Now, finally pushed over the edge by more casual conversation about killing her, she let out a despairing wail and started sobbing.

"Rumi!" Touko shouted across the room. "Keep those kids quiet!"

"Right. Um." Rumi turned around and looked down at the hostages.

The shopkeeper girl was completely lost in her own world, hunched over on the floor with her hands clenched into fists, her chest heaving as she cried. The Child of Miare didn't look much better. She'd retained her composure, but her fingers were still gripping the edge of her skirt, tense enough that she was almost tearing it. She bitterly met Rumi's gaze. "I suppose you want me to calm her down."

"Um. Well."

Rumi fretted with her crossbow, but she had already taken pretty much every chance she could find to wind it, adjust it, or check its sights. It was starting to feel suspiciously like an excuse to ignore the events that were happening around her.

She glanced back over her shoulder. The other kappa were still arguing about the children, completely wrapped up in their disagreement. Keeping her eyes on them, she leaned over. Her fingers settled on the key to the handcuffs. Centimeter by centimeter, she eased it closer. She could feel the Child of Miare's eyes on her the entire time.

Rumi slipped the key into her pocket and whispered to the girls behind her, keeping her eyes on the kappa. "Stand up really slow and follow me."

"Huh?"

"Um. I'll help you escape."

"... why?" the girl whispered back, after a few seconds.

It was a very good question that Rumi didn't have a very good answer for. If she did this now, she was not only going to stop making money, but she wouldn't even get to keep the money she had in the hideout. Money was kind of an abstract, long-term sort of worry, though, considering that Touko would probably just shoot her in the face the first chance she got.

In lieu of an actual answer, she hissed, "Please hurry!"

The girl wasn't about to ask twice. She had a brief, whispered discussion with her friend. They rose to their feet, and even with the sound of the reverse-rain drowning it out, Rumi flinched at every sound they made. Fortunately, nobody else seemed to notice. The other kappa were focused on the balcony door again, taking another peek of the outside world.

"This way," Rumi whispered.

The stairway down to the ground floor was only a few meters away. She crept toward it, fingers fretting at her crossbow. The rain was too loud to even hear their footsteps behind her. It was a blessing for stealth, but she just had to take it on faith that they were following. She moved forward a meter, and then another...

"Ah." Orisa was the first one to spot them moving. "They're leaving."

All the kappa turned toward the three, and Rumi froze in place. For a second, they stared at each other across the building.

Touko bristled. "What the hell are you—"

"F-freeze!" Rumi blurted, whipping her crossbow up. She'd always wanted to say that.

They froze, halfway through reaching for their weapons. "You gonna tell us just what you think you're doing?" Touko asked, through gritted teeth.

And, Rumi noted, Ririsa's hand was still creeping toward her own crossbow. Rumi desperately took aim and pulled the trigger. The crossbow discharged with a satisfying _clunk_ , followed by a series of soft groans and squeaks as it prepared itself for another shot. Across the room, the bolt slammed into the wall half a meter from Ririsa's head.

"I said freeze!" Rumi squeaked threateningly. And to the girls behind her, she added. "Go! Down the stairs!"

They went. She didn't dare to turn her head to look at them, but could see them turning down the stairs from the corner of her eye.

"I'm taking the humans...!" Rumi shouted. "I won't let you kill them and, um! I'm going with them!"

She took a step toward the stairway, and shot another bolt toward the group just to demonstrate that she was serious. That was a mistake. The crossbow had barely even started loading another shot before Ririsa jerked to the side, snapped her crossbow up, and fired back.

The bolt whizzed by so close that Rumi could feel the wind on her cheek. Emboldened by the move, every other kappa fell into a blur of action as they scrambled for their own weapons.

"Run!" Rumi squealed. She turned and barreled down the stairs, and was barely on the second one before another bolt impacted behind her. "Run toward land and don't stop!"

At the bottom of the stairs, the two girls were stalled. There was still water on the ground floor, and the stairs disappeared down into its surface. Rumi waved them forward as she approached. "Please go! They're going to shoot us!" After a moment's thought, she added, "If we're really lucky, they'll _only_ shoot us!"

The Child of Miare was the first one to move. She looked down at the water, hesitating for a moment. Then, she hoisted her robe up and jumped in. She landed with a splash, but it only came up to her thighs now. Her friend followed suit, Rumi was soon after, and they sloshed off toward the first-floor door at a sprint.

Behind them, footsteps thudded to a stop at the top of the door. "I said get them!" Touko bellowed, as footsteps on the floor above thundered toward the stairs. "Out on the balcony, shoot 'em from there if they leave!"

Rumi threw the door open, and was greeted with the rain. Up close, it looked even stranger. The surface of the water was churning furiously, like there was a barely-concealed piranha feeding frenzy beneath it. The air was thick with droplets, making it look like a solid gray wall. Rumi could barely see a meter in front of them.

"What..." The shopkeeper stumbled to a stop just short of entering the water. "What _is_ that?!"

"It doesn't matter," her friend said. She didn't even slow down, but yanked on her hand as she passed. "We can't wait here."

The two stumbled off into the wall of water. Rumi was glad that they'd made the decision to enter it, because it might have taken her a few seconds to work up the nerve, herself. After taking a deep breath, she leapt into the reverse rainstorm.

The world was engulfed with a roar of water. The two girls were barely a meter ahead of her, and she could only see them as a hazy outline through it.

She sped up to catch up to them, and the three continued on toward the shore. Behind her, she couldn't even hear if they were still being pursued.

* * *

Nitori had never seen a miracle up close. Or from far away, for that matter. It turned out, they were pretty weird. The entire flooded area was shrouded in a wall of upward-falling rain, shielding it from sight. It formed a broad pillar of water that stretched up toward the heavens... where it spread out, forming a fat, white cloud that roiled and bubbled as it grew.

A frankly improbable number of rainbows shimmered around the kilometer-tall column of water.

It was a heck of a show. Half the village had already turned out to gawk. Nitori couldn't really blame them. It wasn't every day that you saw something like that. She'd already made a few attempts at the math in her head, figuring out just how efficiently you could generate hydroelectric power with an ability like that to keep the water topped up. The answer was probably 'a lot,' but she doubted Sanae would be too amenable to that business proposal.

"Does she really have to be so flashy?" Reimu grumbled, looking up at the water. "I bet her shrine's going to coast on the donations from this for a year..."

"That's business for you," Nitori said, with no small amount of pride. It looked like the show would be over soon, though. The pool of water had already lost most of its volume. Most of the submerged area was shallow enough that the ground was visible through it, and an entire street on the edge was already completely dry. The wall of water was slowly retreating down an alley, shrinking in from all sides.

And against all expectations, Nitori spotted something moving inside of it. It resolved itself into a human figure soon, then burst out, sputtering for air. Soon, two more figures followed it.

A murmur of surprise ran through the gathering crowd. The three figures were drenched and bedraggled, but even at this distance, Nitori could pick out...

"Akyuu!" Reimu dashed forward, half-flying, half-running. Nitori stared for a moment before hurrying after her.

Not that there was any rush. By the time she got there, the three were still barely meters from the wall, struggling to catch their breath. Seeing them up close, 'bedraggled' was a very gentle way of putting it. They looked like they'd been the targets of some kind of serial killer who only had a pressure washer at his disposal. They looked like they'd personally upset one of the dragon-kings of the seas. They somehow looked _wetter_ than if they'd just spent all that time completely submerged. Kosuzu's hair had been blasted out of its customary pigtails. Akyuu's was just short enough that the continued pressure had left it sticking up into the air. Both girls' cheeks had a rosy red glow from the chill.

And the third figure, the one who had left the water first, was such a mess that it took several seconds for Nitori to recognize that she was looking at a fellow kappa.

Akyuu hunched down, coughing and gasping for air. Kosuzu slid an arm behind her back to prop her up. "M-miss Reimu!" she shouted back, sounding pretty breathless herself. "There are kappa in there! They kidnapped us, they were going to kill us...!"

Reimu skidded to a stop just short of them. "Kappa?"

"It, uh." Nitori eyed the other kappa, who was currently struggling to tug all of her drenched hair out of her face. "It makes sense. I've kinda suspected that those tengu who've been bombing everything are just kappa in disguise."

"You really should say this kind of thing before people get kidnapped, you know," Reimu griped. She glanced to the wall of water, then suspiciously to the kappa who had come with the two. "Is this one of them?"

The kappa looked up, blinking against the water in her eyes. "Oh. Um."

"She." Akyuu wheezed. "She saved us. They were going to kill us. She helped us out."

Reimu hesitated, clenching her gohei tighter and inspecting the kappa. Evidently, she decided that this wasn't the time to press the issue. "So the ones who tried to kill you are still in there?"

"R-right," Kosuzu said. "In one of the two-story buildings. I never got a good look at it, so I'm not sure which one..."

Reimu inspected the wall of water again, then nodded. "I'll go look for them. Nitori, watch out for these two and see what you can get out of that kappa."

"Eh?!" Nitori stiffened up, blinking in surprise. "Why do I have to do that?!"

"Because I need the help right now, and you're the only one around." Reimu didn't exactly sound patient. "Do you have a problem with it?"

"A-ah, um, nope. I was going to suggest giving you a hand, even," Nitori lied. It never paid to get on the bad side of an angry shrine maiden.

"Good. Akyuu, you should probably find your servants and let them know you're okay."

With that, Reimu stepped forward, and soon vanished in the haze of water.

* * *

Orisa sat near the wall, looking out at the world through the cracked balcony door. Orisa was good at standing guard. She could do a lot to keep herself entertained in her head. It cut down on the distractions and fidgeting. Right now, she was fleshing out her designs for the dress she was going to make Maeri when this was all over. Three layers for the skirt, she'd decided. Overlap them, with just a bit of the lower layer sticking out in each case. The resulting hidden areas would be good for pockets; stylish _and_ functional.

Thinking about the dress was a nice change of pace from watching outside. Outside didn't look so good.

The water was shallow now. Worse, as it evaporated, the edges of the pool were shrinking inward, closing around the inn like a trap. Before her mind had drifted to tailoring, Orisa had busied herself by trying to calculate how long it would take to reach them. The numbers weren't good. Maybe ten more minutes, if they got lucky.

Something thudded on the stairs, and every eye in the room turned to watch as a drenched Ririsa trudged back up.

"Couldn't get them," she announced. "It takes forever to find anything in that damn rain. I was lucky to make it back."

"A lot of good that did," Touko grumbled.

"That's not all. They hooked up with Nitori out there, and the Hakurei shrine maiden's heading this way. We've got maybe five minutes."

A round of murmurs ran through the group. Most of the individual words were obscenities. "The shrine maiden, huh?" Touko said.

"Boss, it's worse than that," Maeri said. "Nitori's the one running that TV station. If they do another broadcast telling people what we did..." She gave a despairing groan. "Rumi knows everything, too."

"Don't know if I'd say that girl knows much," Touko said. "... but she knows enough, yeah."

"If it's just the shrine maiden, we could lay low for a few days and, and, I don't know. Go hide in the outskirts or something. But if they tell all of Gensokyo..."

Maeri trailed off, fretting, and Orisa stepped over to take her hand. "We kill them," she suggested.

"Yeah, you just run out there and kill Nitori and a shrine maiden in a fair fight," Touko said, with sarcasm thick enough to use as reactor shielding. "The rest of us will wait here. No. No. That ain't happenin'."

"Kinda screwed," Orisa said.

"We really are," Maeri sighed.

"We didn't kill anybody," Ririsa said. "Turn ourselves in now and she might let us off with the beating of a lifetime."

"Not doin' that, either." Touko dug in her bag and hefted out a massive gun, then started making adjustments, looking both angry and thoughtful. "So if it's just the humans, word will spread pretty quick, but we might have a day or two head start to go to ground. If it's the humans _and_ that TV station, all of Gensokyo will be out for our hides. Sound right?"

"It'll be that hunt for the amanojaku all over again," Ririsa grumbled.

"Sounds about right, boss," Maeri said.

"Looks like our first stop's all picked out for us, then. Pack up and get ready to move out. Nothing that'll slow you down. Gotta sneak out before that shrine maiden shows up."

"Wait, wait, wait," Maeri said. "Where are we going?"

"You know where that TV station is, right?"

"Well... yes, but—"

"But nothin'. It doesn't matter what we do if that place gets half of Gensokyo hunting our asses. Gotta take care of that before we worry about anything else." Touko slapped an arming mechanism on her gun, and it gave a menacing hiss. She grinned. "The fact we get to get rid of some pests while we do so is just what they call a bonus."

* * *

"... so you flood the human village, then loot the place while it's underwater and pretty much no humans or youkai can see you," Nitori said.

"Uh-huh," Rumi said. "We stole a bunch of stuff."

"And get everybody chasing after a bunch of nonexistent tengu so that nobody's suspicious when a few kappa start pawning human junk everywhere."

"Right..."

"It's not a bad plan," Nitori conceded, and looked out over the formerly-flooded area. "I almost wish I'd thought of it myself."

The circle of floodwater just kept on shrinking, retreating away from them street by street. The displaced humans had already started cautiously advancing back into their reclaimed neighborhood. In the middle of it, the dwindling column of reversed rain was still rising into the air, now only a matter of meters wide.

"Do you think miss Reimu found those other kappa...?" Kosuzu asked, following Nitori's gaze.

"I doubt it," Akyuu said. "Spell card duels aren't exactly subtle."

"I don't know if Touko would have a spell card duel... most of the times she just shoots at things," Rumi said. "She makes a lot of big, weird guns. I think they should have names, but I told her that one time and she got mad at me."

"You've gotta name your experimental weapons. Otherwise, what's the point?" Nitori said, nodding. "I wouldn't really bet on Reimu finding them, though. If they wanted to get out, they had a pretty big head start."

"Right..." Rumi said, and sighed. "They'll probably get back to the hideout before we even leave here..."

"Eh? Hideout?" Nitori glanced over thoughtfully. "... okay, wait, if they have a hideout, you know where it is, right?"

"Huh? Um, yes." Rumi froze, as realization slowly dawned on her. "I could show you where the hideout is...!"

"... kind of slow to pick up on things, aren't you? But, yeah. I mean, I don't care about the youkai extermination angle, but..." Nitori glanced up toward Sanae. She was visible now, a tiny silhouette hovering in the growing fog. "They've caused enough trouble that I feel like the world owes them a killing or two."

"A noble sentiment," Akyuu said dryly.

The pillar of water had already been thinning, and now, it tapered down to nothing as the last of the pool vanished. It rose up into the air, and the reverse rain was complete, leaving only a massive, puffy cloud that threatened to blot out the sun.

Nitori had gotten used to the constant background hiss of the water bubbling itself up into the air. Now that it was gone, the silence felt like a very fragile thing. Nobody picked up the conversation. Sanae's distant figure started slowly descending toward the ground.

Nitori remembered that she still had a love confession to deliver, but shoved it to the back of her mind. This seemed like emphatically not the right time.

Sanae hovered down toward the group. As she approached, Nitori could see that she looked pale and listless. She spring forward to help as soon as Sanae was close to the ground, steadying the shrine maiden as she landed. It proved to be a good idea, since Sanae sort of stumbled to a stop.

"That..." she gasped, breathless, "was really cool...!"

"It was pretty impressive, miss Sanae!" Kosuzu agreed. "Oh, um, and thank you for cleaning up that water. I'll tell all the villagers it was you, in case somebody doesn't know!"

"Yes, that was a noble thing to do," Akyuu said.

"It was... k-kinda hard." Sanae took an unsteady step forward. Nitori eased her down to sit on the ground. "Since I didn't finish preparing the miracle, I had to..." She coughed and wheezed, before waving a hand dismissively. "You know."

"I don't, actually, but I think I get the idea," Akyuu said.

Sanae glanced toward Rumi as subtly as she could while gasping for air. "A-another kappa...?"

Rumi jolted upright, the color draining from her face. "I! Um! I'm not a bad guy. I'm a good guy. Well, um, I'm not a _guy_ either, but..."

"Relax, kid. She doesn't even know kappa were responsible for this stuff yet," Nitori said, and glanced to Sanae. "... kappa were responsible for this stuff."

"Huh. I always thought kappa were nice..."

"Kappa are scary!" Kosuzu said. "They jump out when you go for walks by the river and drown you...!" She paused, looking to the two kappa present. "... I mean, some of them do. That's what people say, at least."

"Only if you're an outsider or really piss somebody off," Nitori said, and looked back to Sanae. "Er, anyway, this is Rumi. She helped these two escape. And... she can show us where those other kappa are hiding out."

"Huh. … oh. Oh!" Sanae's posture straightened up. "You mean we could go stop them right now?"

"... right, yeah, that was the idea."

Sanae's earlier exhaustion seemed to be gone in an instant. "Let's go, then! What are we waiting for! Oh! Um! Akyuu and Kosuzu, are you guys going to be okay?"

"We'll be fine," Akyuu said. "Really, I'll sleep better tonight if I know you're taking care of things, and Reimu is still around to keep an eye on the village. I should get back to my manor soon, anyway. I'm sure there's a lot of work to do, now that all the refugees will want to head home."

"Oh! Right, we can go back to Suzunaan now," Kosuzu said. Her enthusiasm didn't last long. "... I'll have to carry all that stuff back from your manor..."

"Sounds like a yes," Nitori said.

"Great!" Sanae thrust her gohei-wielding hand into the air enthusiastically. The fact that she didn't currently have a gohei on her didn't seem to slow her down. "Let's go youkai hunting!"

* * *

Day number three of being stuck at the station.

Hatate had accepted it at this point. Sort of. Kind of. She usually didn't leave home much to begin with, preferring to find stories with spirit photography from the comfort of her own bedroom. This, then, was barely a change of pace. Especially now that basically living in the station for half a week had necessitated some changes.

She'd cleared the mixing desk, for one thing. If she had to sit at it for three days, she got to cover it with stuff that _she_ wanted. Those were the rules she'd settled on. She didn't have much to put on it anyway, but it was the thought that counted.

Second, she'd paid a fairy a small cut of her bonus to run into the tengu village and buy some snacks for her. She'd used her newly-cleared desk space to lay them out, for maximum grazing potential.

Third, she'd figured out how to play the sounds from broadcasts within the station. It let her watch the station's content as it aired. She'd always been sort of curious about this stuff, since she hadn't gotten many chances to watch it herself. It didn't make much sense, it turned out. Everything from Sanae's schedule for today was mostly shows about big metal people fighting each other, and they were hand-drawn. Even with the sound on, she could barely follow them. She half paid attention, though, making small talk with Hina while she steadily transferred the contents of a jar of konpeito to her mouth.

Considering that they were getting paid, there were much worse ways to spend a day.

"So what I don't get," Hatate said, watching the screen over crossed arms, "is what these normal humans have to do with anything. The big metal guys are the ones doing all the fighting, right?"

"Hmm... that's true," Hina said. "Maybe they're two different plots? That sounds very modern."

"Yeah, I mean, maybe." Hatate wasn't convinced. She'd only been half-watching the show so far—the programming schedule called it the Super Robot Block—but it kind of _felt_ like there was more to it than that.

Before she could puzzle out this mystery, she heard voices outside, followed by a rattle of the front door. She sighed, not bothering to look away from the TV. "If you're here about getting shows or whatever, you can come back later!" she announced, loudly enough that they could hopefully hear her through the door. "The owners aren't in!"

The voices quieted down. Hatate rocked back in her chair and glanced through the door to the station's front room. "Huh, did that work?"

"I don't hear anything..." Hina said. "Do you think I should check?"

"Nah." Hatate waved the idea aside. "Probably just some dumb kids or something. Can't even do an honest day's work in this place without getting tons of interruptions and stuff." She shoveled another handful of konpeito into her mouth.

"Well, if you're sure..." Hina settled in and frowned at the television, deep in thought. "I think... I think that maybe, the big metal people are actually just armor, and the normal people are inside of them."

"Uh-huh." Hatate pulled her camera out and flipped it open to start browsing for pictures for tonight's news. "Can't wait for this dumb block to be over. Even that half-youkai's show about old junk was better than—"

She was cut off, as the front door opened with a slam that shook the station. A moment later, so did the back door in the maintenance room.

"Hey, what do you think you're doing?!" Hatate leapt to her feet, letting a handful of konpeito drop to the floor. Footsteps were rushing into the station from both sides. She raised her hand, energy glittering on her fingertips as she prepared for an attack.

The maintenance room door burst open, just as the attackers from the front of the building reached the studio. Four kappa rushed into the room, two from each direction.

They were all armed. Every weapon was pointed at her and Hina. Hatate considered for just a moment, then let her attack dissipate and raised her hands. "Calm down, jeez! We're not even doing anything!"

"Yeah, you ain't." One of the kappa stepped forward and gestured her away with the tip of her gun. While the others were all carrying crossbows, her gun looked a bit more... _substantial_ , a gently-humming thing with a grid of gleaming needle points just visible within the barrel. "Why don't you stretch your legs a little? Step over here, away from all them important-lookin' buttons."

"Look, I'm not a dumbass, I'm not going to push buttons with you, like, half a meter away." Hatate still followed the order, walking with Hina to stand in the middle of the room, their hands still raised.

"Is this a robbery?" Hina asked. "We really don't have any money here."

Hatate had been thinking, though. The voice had sounded familiar to begin with, but now recognition clicked in her head. She'd heard it before, half a dozen times when she was watching Sanae's video of the night of the flood. At least that explained why they were here. Kind of. "If you're looking for Sanae, she's down in the human village or something. Sucks to be you, huh?"

"Well, see, that's the nice thing. I'm a pretty patient type." Keeping her weapon leveled at Hatate, the kappa slung a bag from her back and hefted it aside to the floor. Its top came open, revealing a stockpile of enough guns, grenades, and bombs to take over a small country. Hatate didn't feel like that was a good sign. "We can wait around and give her a warm greeting when she gets back."


	14. Chapter 14

When Rumi had led Sanae and Nitori to the kappa hideout, she hadn't been sure what to expect. It seemed like a fight was the most obvious possibility, and she really wasn't sure if she could handle that. She'd never shot at anybody before today, and she felt like people were probably pretty hard to hit, especially if they were shooting back. She also wasn't sure if she could actually bring herself to try shooting most of the kappa. She could definitely see herself shooting Touko, though. Shooting Touko a lot. It was satisfying to imagine, but not all that productive to think about.

What they'd found, though, was nothing. The headquarters was empty. Well, mostly empty.

Robo was there, at least.

"Who's a good doggy? Whoooo's a good doggy?" Sanae cooed, as she scratched at his ears.

Robo looked like he'd never been happier. His big, fluffy tail flopped against the ground, while he panted up at her.

"I never got why humans talk to dogs like that," Nitori said, watching her. "It isn't like the dog is going to answer or something."

Sanae ignored her, crouching down to bury her face against the dog's side. " _You're_ a good doggy!" she said, with her voice muffled by fur.

Nitori shook her head in disapproval, but didn't move to stop Sanae. She glanced to Rumi. "So, unless you want to tell me this dog masterminded the whole thing, I can't help but notice that there isn't anybody here."

"Huh? Oh, um, no, he didn't." Rumi shook her head. "I don't think he's very smart..."

"... so where are these other kappa?"

Rumi tapped her chin and looked over the cavern. It looked mostly like she remembered, and they'd already done a really quick sweep of the place to make sure nobody was in the other rooms. The place really was empty. "Maybe that other shrine maiden got them...?"

"Yeah, maybe." Nitori didn't sound convinced. "I mean, they might be avoiding the place in case you brought reinforcements here or something. Which you did. So points for them, I guess."

"But where would they go?" Sanae asked, while rubbing at Robo's tummy with both hands. He gave low, content, rumbling noises. "If they can't hide out in the village anymore, and they didn't come here..."

"This whole area's covered with caves," Nitori said. "There are dozens of places they could hide and wait to clean this place out once nobody's paying attention."

"Oh..."

"We could look in their rooms, maybe...?" Rumi offered. "For clues, I mean."

Nobody could offer a better idea, so they did.

Touko's room came first. Rumi had never even dared to peek inside, since she could only imagine what horrors it contained. Mostly, the answer was: junk. There was a heap of it piled along one wall, threatening to overflow and bury her workbench. Only sheer bulk kept it visible. It was an entire laboratory in itself, covered with crossbow strings, heavily-stained canisters of explosives, tools, blocks of wood, sawdust, and grease. The far end of the room had a stained mattress to serve as a bed, and another wall held a massive weapon rack. Or, mostly weaponry, at least. Weird, personally-invented guns hung from a few of the hooks, but most of them were empty. This was a disappointment, in some ways. She'd always imagined Touko to have a lot of big torture racks like villains in books. That would have been scary, but appropriate.

The next room was Orisa and Maeri's shared room. There were dozens of books, notebooks, and loose pages, most of which were covered in notes scrawled in cramped handwriting. They'd looked promising at first, but after looking at them for a few minutes, Rumi had barely been able to read any, and the ones she did read said cryptic things like, 'village pop ~4.2k = 20% 200 yen = 168k **CHECK HISTORIC PRICES**.' A single corner of the room seemed to be reserved for Orisa, with a worktable holding a sewing kit and a few swatches of cloth, next to a tailor's dummy with the beginnings of a very, very pink dress on it. Scattered around the room were a few leftover pieces of their tengu disguises. Weird, but not very informative.

Ririsa's room held a motley collection of outside world magazines, and very little else. She owned four knives, it turned out. That was a little unsettling, but then, so was Ririsa.

Only once Rumi peeked into her own room did she notice something out of the ordinary. "Huh..." she said, digging around in her clothes pile just to be sure she hadn't missed something. "Weeeeird."

"What is?" Nitori said, leaning against the mouth of the small cavern. "Besides that bed, I mean."

"The bombs." Rumi crouched down to inspect the area beneath her workbench. She picked up a discarded piece of her tengu disguise and glanced under it, but there was nothing there, either. "They aren't here."

"Bombs?"

"Antigravity bombs. They're the things that made those houses fly."

"Do you mean to tell me they got here before us and loaded up on _bombs_?"

"Um... probably? There are supposed to be eight or nine of them here..."

"That sounds really dangerous..." Sanae said. "We have to do something to stop them!"

Nitori shrugged. "Well, yeah, that's a great idea, but what can we do about it? They could be anywhere in Gensokyo by now."

"Yeah, true. Um... Oh!" Sanae perked up. "We could do a broadcast to warn people to look out for them. Now that we know what they look like, we can make sure we find out if they go anywhere, right?"

"That isn't much of a plan. … but, it's the only plan we have, isn't it?"

* * *

The trip back up to the station was a long one. Rumi had refused to leave the dog behind, and with it in tow, they were stuck walking the whole way. The walk up the mountainside wasn't a brief one to begin with, let alone with a dog sitting down to sniff things, scratch itself, and generally just be annoying every five minutes.

Nitori couldn't figure out why anybody ever kept a dog around. They were like children, but with a dog, there wasn't even the distant hope that it would take care of you in your old age.

There were other things on her mind the whole time, too. Like her confession to Sanae. She never had quite finished it back there. Now didn't really seem like a good time, either. Since she'd barely managed to get as far as she did the first time, she really doubted she'd perform any better with an audience. With just the two of them, she'd barely managed to stammer her way through a few sentences. Now, she felt like she'd be lucky to even reach the fourth word before she threw up on the dog.

She was still thinking of such things when the broadcasting tower finally came into view. She sighed with relief as they walked the last leg to the station. "I really wish this place were more conveniently-located."

"It's a bit of a walk," Sanae agreed. "But once we have the ropeway up and running, it will be pretty convenient to the village! Maybe we can even add a stop for it..."

"I don't know if I'd go that far. Having a bunch of humans poking around would make it hard to run a business."

"Maybe we could offer tours or something...?"

"Yeah, maybe." Nitori looked back to Rumi as they approached the door. "Why don't you have the dog wait outside? I don't want him... doing dog things everywhere."

Rumi glanced down to Robo. "Dog things...?"

"You know. Peeing on stuff, barking..." Nitori fished for more items to add to the list. She'd never spent much time around dogs, really. "... eating things."

"What would he eat...?"

" _Things_. Just leave him out here!"

"Oh... okay. Robo," Rumi crouched down and addressed Robo. "You need to stay out here. I'll be back really soon, okay?"

The dog yawned and plodded over to sit next to the wall. If he understood a word of the instructions, he didn't show it.

"So, um, about this broadcast..." Sanae said, pushing the door open. "What all can we say about those kappa? They have a bomb and crossbows, I guess. Do we know their names?"

"I do," Rumi volunteered. "And, um. Their heights. And favorite snacks."

"I don't know if that last one is very useful, but I guess it can't hurt."

The front room of the station was even more of a mess than the last time Nitori had seen it. It was probably a result of leaving the place to Hatate and Hina for half a week. She'd just have to tidy it up once things settled down a bit... or better yet, convince somebody else to. "I know a bit about most of them, too," she said. "Between the two of us, we can probably figure out enough for a story."

"Oh, nice! … which reminds me. Um, is it true that Hatate did a news broadcast about the goddesses?"

"Yep. I was kind of surprised, too. Usually a tengu would rather just do nothing and brag about it."

"Hatate's nice! You shouldn't say bad things about..."

Sanae pushed open the studio door, and trailed off as they stepped inside.

The studio was empty.

Well, mostly empty. A TV on the wall showed that the station was broadcasting, but nobody was sitting at the mixing desk. Only once she'd stepped inside did Nitori see that the place wasn't quite _entirely_ unoccupied. On the far end of the room, Hina was knelt on the floor, her hands clenched in her lap and wringing together anxiously.

Touko sat on the news desk, with an oversized gun pressed up to the back of Hina's head.

"Nitori, r—!"

Hina didn't even get to finish her warning before a flurry of movement filled the room. Hidden assailants stepped out from behind desks and electronic cabinets. In a second or two, three crossbows were pointed in their direction.

Touko, on the other hand, didn't budge. "Well, now," she said. "About time you showed up."

At the back of the group, Rumi gave a soft whimper down in her throat.

"W-what are you doing to Hina?!" Sanae thrust her gohei toward the kappa. "How did you get in—"

"Shush, and listen close." Touko tweaked a knob on her weapon to draw attention to it. Something inside vented with a low hiss, and an indicator on the side blinked. "See this pretty gadget here? I pull the trigger, it shoots eight needles through this girl's head just shy of the speed of sound."

"She's a goddess," Nitori said uncertainly. "A normal weapon won't do any permanent harm."

Touko's grin widened, taking on a feral edge. "Still blow a quarter kilogram of steel through her head. Should be an interesting experiment to see what happens, don't you figure?"

Nitori had to admit, she had a point.

"You can't do that!" Sanae blurted out, taking a step forward and giving her gohei another threatening waggle. "I... I challenge you to a spell card duel! Four cards apiece! If I win, you have to surrender and—!"

"Nah, that isn't gonna happen. I got nothin' to gain by foolin' around with you, and everything to lose. Sit down, shrine maiden."

"But...!"

"Sit down, or we find out what's inside your friend's head. Either way, I'm havin' a good day. All of you. Get down and be real still while you wait for Maeri and Orisa here to handcuff you."

"Do you think we're dumb or something?" Nitori asked. "How do we know you won't just kill us once we're helpless?"

"Funny thing is, you don't, really." Touko casually shifted her weapon away from Hina's head. Without further warning, she pulled the trigger. Nitori didn't even see the projectiles, just heard a sharp pop followed by a blur of motion. One speared through her calf without slowing down. With a squeal of pain, she crumpled to the floor, all the force draining from the wounded leg. The barrage of needles buried themselves in the floor, leaving blood drooling down her thigh. There was no smoke or energy to signal any spiritual attack, though. Just a normal object wound, which her youkai body would heal in a matter of minutes.

Right now, with her hand clutched over a hole in her leg, that was only so much of a reassurance.

"... turns out, you don't have much say in the matter when we've got you at gunpoint," Touko finished. Her weapon hummed softly to itself as it prepared for another shot. "Anyone else have any protests? I've got plenty more bolts left."

* * *

"Here," Maeri said, gesturing toward one of the nearby desks with her crossbow. "Get down."

Rumi knew better than to argue at this point. Maeri wasn't nearly as ruthless as Touko, but she really didn't want to risk getting herself shot. She knelt on the ground, her hands behind her back, and was surprised to find that rather than handcuffing her, Maeri grabbed her shoulder. "What are you—?"

She didn't have to wait long for an answer. Maeri's other hand gripped her prosthetic arm near the base, and with a deft tug that suggested she'd watched Rumi do this a few times, pulled it off. The arm disengaged from her socket with a click, going limp as it lost connection.

"... ah! My arm...!"

"It's Touko's orders." Maeri tossed the arm down on top of the desk; in response to the impact, it gave a jerk, and a screwdriver shot out from one fingertip. "Handcuffs aren't much good when you can just take your arm off. If it makes you feel any better..." She crouched down and latched the handcuffs around Rumi's remaining wrist, then fastened the other end to a bar on the desk. "... these things look _really_ uncomfortable. You're probably better off with half as many arms to wear them on."

"But my nose really itches..."

"I really don't think that's your biggest problem right now."

Rumi nodded glumly and looked out over the room. She'd been the last one to get handcuffed, and they'd made no secret that it was because she was the least dangerous. The other hostages were scattered around the floor, most with their backs to the wall, spread far enough apart that they couldn't talk without it being obvious. Not that she'd know what to say even if she could. 'Sorry my former friends are probably going to kill all of us,' maybe.

She sighed. "I should have just kept going to the underground... even getting eaten by oni would probably be better than this..."

"Probably," Maeri agreed, and leaned in closer, giving a cautious glance over her shoulder. "... speaking confidentially, I do think Touko's overstepping herself here, and I don't particularly want to kill any of you."

"Oh! Do you have a plan to save us?"

"Ah? Oh, no. I'm not suicidal. She'd have my guts in her hands before I even finished explaining myself. But, you know. No hard feelings." Maeri gave a slightly forced smile and scooped Rumi's mechanical arm up, giving her a parting wave with her own hand. "I'll try to put in a good word for you, though."

* * *

Today had just gone from bad to worse, in Hina's book. At least when Sanae and Nitori had been outside, she'd been able to hold onto the hope that they'd return and rescue them. Now that they were tied up, the only thing she had to be thankful for was that there was no longer a gun pointed at the back of her head.

It gave her a bit more leeway to consider her options. Unfortunately, she'd already been handcuffed for about forty-five minutes before the others had arrived, so she'd had plenty of time to consider the topic and determine that there wasn't much she could do. It was a strange feeling. In her centuries of existence, she'd felt the fear of fading from lack of belief now and then, but never a real, immediate threat to her life. It was... _worrying_. It made her reconsider just how justified humans were in being afraid of her abilities, but now really wasn't the time for that.

Touko had settled down onto the desk next to her, looking increasingly pleased with herself as she watched the hostages get handcuffed. Once Rumi was locked into place and they were all secured, she slid down from her impromptu throne, strolling out into the center of the room with a casual swagger. "Well, isn't this just beautiful, girls? Started out at the bottom, and here we are." She gestured at the building around them. "Even caught ourselves a shrine maiden. The way them other youkai keep gettin' beat by them, you'd think it's hard or something."

A wave of uncertain chuckles rose from the other kappa. It was the laughter of a group who were much less amused than they were uneasy about the gun-wielding maniac in front of them.

"You can't do this!" Sanae shouted, tugging against her restraints. "There are still the spell card rules...!"

"Rules don't mean much if nobody knows they're broken, do they? Way I see it, once you're dead and the village is flooded, there's nobody left in Gensokyo who knows our little secret. Pretty convenient for us, if you ask me."

"... flood? Wait, you're going to blow the lake up again?!"

"Sure am. If at first you don't succeed..." Touko waved a hand vaguely in the air before finishing the aphorism. "... shoot somebody and try again. However it goes. Point is, I think we've got enough of them anti-gravity bombs to get you all out of my hair and still take care of that lake afterward. Ain't that right, Rumi?"

Rumi averted her eyes, looking thoroughly ashamed of herself. Hopefully, she responded, "No?"

This weak show of resistance didn't do much to stop Touko. "Of course, I dunno if something like that's enough to kill a youkai, but I bet it'll soften you up pretty good for finishing you off."

Hina lowered her head and went back to scheming, trying to tune the conversation out. It didn't help that they'd put her the farthest from any of the others, stashed in a corner behind one of the desks. She couldn't even see most of the room. Just a section of the far wall, with one of the wall-mounted televisions playing the current broadcast. That wasn't even _interesting_ , let alone helpful, since it was currently showing nothing but a slow credit scroll.

… which, actually, gave her an idea.

"Excuse me!"

Touko obviously wasn't in a 'taking questions' sort of mood. She hefted her backpack full of weaponry onto her shoulder and stood up. "So, anyway, if you'll excuse us—"

Hina wasn't going to be dissuaded that easily. "Excuse me! Miss kappa!"

Touko gritted her teeth, but glanced over to her. "What is it?!"

She'd practically spat the question out, but Hina didn't let it faze her. "The station's broadcast." She gestured toward the nearest screen with her head. "It's going to end soon."

"You think I care?"

"Well, I was just thinking... if the station goes silent, won't that look pretty suspicious to anybody who's watching? If you're relying on secrecy, it would be better to avoid attracting attention, wouldn't it?" Hina gave her most sympathetic smile. "If you'd like, I could put the next program on to keep it going."

Touko scowled and glanced between Hina and the television, as if trying to tease out just what sort of trick she was playing here. Hina maintained the most neutral smile she could manage. Touko apparently couldn't come up with a solid counterargument. "Orisa!" she barked. "Let her put in the next movie or whatever, but if she tries anything cute, I want her dead on the spot."

"Uh-huh." Orisa gave a disinterested sigh and crouched down to undo Hina's handcuffs. Every hostage's eye was on Hina as she got up, and she could practically hear the whispered prayers inside their heads. She crossed the room, taking care not to make any sudden moves, and slid down behind the mixing desk, all while under the cover of a crossbow tip.

Hina had learned a lot about the mixing desk over the days of running the station with Hatate. She certainly knew how to put on videos. She picked a television series at random. She popped it into the player, and with the press of a few buttons, set it to display on the screens inside the station.

She wasn't about to leave it at just that, though. With a few more buttons, she turned on the camera, and switched the tower's broadcast feed over to it. The only sign of what she'd done was a small screen on the desk, showing the current feed from the station's broadcast—the camera's viewpoint, a section of wall just above Sanae's head. It wasn't much, but it was the closest to an SOS that she'd be able to send without getting herself shot. After reassuring herself with a quick glance at it, she casually scooted a bag of Hatate's snacks over to shield the screen from view.

Orisa glanced over to the screen on the wall, now playing the flashy intro to the next episode of today's programming block. "Done?"

"All done, yes." Hina smiled. "We'll need to change it again in half an hour, but that will do for now."

"Fine." Orisa gestured back toward her previous spot on the floor. "Back down there."

"Right. I guess it was too much to hope that you'd leave me like this." Hina rose from the desk and offered her hands over. The other hostages all shot her confused looks as she walked back to her place on the floor, with Nitori going as far as to mouth, _'what the heck?'_. The captors, too, were watching her, so she simply kept a blank expression and knelt down to let Orisa handcuff her.

The distraction had kept the entire station quiet for a few seconds, but it didn't last long. Hina had barely settled down before Maeri spoke up. "Touko," she said, "we should really be certain about what we're doing. I really don't think it's in our best interests to flood the village again."

"We've been over this."

Touko's voice held a warning growl, but it didn't dissuade Maeri. "We have, and I'm still not convinced. The humans are far from our only problem at this point, and attacking the village will just make it worse. We barely managed to deal with one shrine maiden. The Hakurei maiden is already hunting for us, and if we flood the village _without_ letting the humans evacuate, every youkai in Gensokyo will be out for our heads. We'll—"

"Yeah, I don't know about 'will be,'" Hatate said, raising her voice to interrupt. She leaned forward, straining her restraints. "I heard that Lord Tenma has, like, a spot in his trophy room picked out to mount your heads already."

"You be quiet!" Touko whirled on Maeri again, leaning in and clenching a hand by her side. "And you! I don't wanna hear it! This whole damn plan was yours to begin with!"

"Things change," Ririsa said, just loud enough to be heard.

Orisa stepped in, slightly inserting herself between Touko and Maeri. "Back off," she murmured. Her finger shifted up to rest on the trigger of her crossbow. Maeri's grip on her own tightened. Ririsa, never one to be left out of a good fight, slipped hers from her shoulder.

For a moment, the four kappa stared at each other in tense silence.

Even Touko, it seemed, had the ability to recognize when she was outnumbered four-to-one. "Can't believe you girls sometime." She gave a low growl in her throat, then gestured toward the back room. "Maeri, Ririsa, sounds like we need to have ourselves a _little chit-chat_ ," she announced through gritted teeth. Without further warning, she chucked the handcuff key to Orisa. "You keep an eye on the hostages, and if one of them budges, I want their brains on the wall. You hear me?"

Orisa held Touko's gaze, but didn't respond. With a suggestively forceful series of motions, she tossed the key aside onto a desk and propped her crossbow over her shoulder. Touko didn't seem to be in the mood to press the issue. Maeri and Ririsa in tow, she marched toward the maintenance room.

They had some extra time, at least. It was a weird position for a goddess to be in, but Hina just had to pray that somebody out there would see the message and make sense of it.

* * *

" _Ribbit._ "

"Is that so?" Kanako picked at the remains of her meal, a pile of simple sauteed vegetables and a side of rice. With as much work as they'd needed to do in the aftermath of the attack on the lake, she hadn't had much time to cook. It was just as well, since Sanae had been too focused on preparing her miracle to even eat, and Suwako...

" _Ribbit._ "

Well, Suwako was a frog. A frog that was now sitting at the edge of a dish with a few mealworms squirming on it, looking over them with dismay. Kanako sighed and gave her a nudge with her fingertip. "They're normal mealworms. You're a frog. You need to eat frog food. Don't try to tell me that you'll hunt spiders or something if I leave this to you."

" _Ribbit._ "

"I don't think that's part of a frog's natural diet, dear."

" _Ribbit._ "

" _Especially_ not with hot fudge."

Suwako shifted around, looking annoyed, then reluctantly leaned forward to snatch up one of the mealworms. It squirmed in protest, but a few more snaps of her jaws made it disappear down her throat. " _Ribbit._ "

"Good. Four more to go."

Kanako turned away from the slightly gross display of predation and looked back to the television on the counter. They'd been able to see Sanae's miracle all the way from the shrine, a gray pillar of water rising into the sky and clouds boiling outward. Sanae hadn't returned, though, so the next most likely case was that she'd headed to the station to do a news broadcast about the day's events. All in all, it wasn't a bad way to wrap up this attack. The massive display in the middle of the village would doubtlessly draw in some new worshipers. It wouldn't take long for them to heal from the spiritual wounds, and the shrine would be better off within a matter of months.

No news broadcast yet, though. The station had been playing the same series of giant robot anime for the past few hours, and Kanako had kept the volume just above muted to spare her sanity. Maybe Sanae had gotten wrapped up in celebration afterward and gone to the Hakurei shrine for a night of partying or something. It wouldn't be the first time.

" _Ribbit,_ " Suwako announced, once the last mealworm was gone.

"Good. A healthy appetite is important."

Kanako polished off the last of her meal, the collected Suwako's now-empty feeding dish, making a mental note to clean it very thoroughly before she used it for human food again. While she was up, she made a pot of tea and poured herself a cup before she returned to the table, where Suwako hopped up to rest on her shoulder.

She'd barely taken a sip of the tea before the television caught her eye. It showed a weathered wall, and nothing else. Speech was just barely audible, though.

Curiously, Kanako leaned forward and turned the volume up until she could make out the words.

 _"The Hakurei maiden is already hunting for us, and if we flood the village_ _ **without**_ _letting the humans evacuate, every youkai in Gensokyo will be out for our heads. We'll—"_

 _"Yeah, I don't know about 'will be.' I heard that Lord Tenma has, like, a spot in his trophy room picked out to mount your heads already."_

 _"You be quiet! And you! I don't wanna hear it! This whole damn plan was yours to begin with!"_

The broadcasted argument wore on and on, but Kanako had heard enough. She tuned it out, staring at the screen in complete shock. The view on the camera changed for the first time, as the very top of a mound of green hair poked up into the frame. Sanae.

" _Ribbit._ "

"Yes. I saw it."

" _Ribbit._ "

"I'd think that would be obvious." Kanako turned the television off and rose to standing. "We're heading to the TV station."

* * *

The kappa argument at the back of the station just kept getting louder and angrier. From what little Nitori could see of it, it was starting to involve the occasional brandished weapon. Normally, something like that would worry her. Right now, things couldn't exactly get any worse, and if their captors started killing each other, she'd gladly cheer them on.

As an added bonus, their guard had already drifted halfway across the room to eavesdrop on the argument, and was only glancing back to check on them over her shoulder every few seconds.

It wasn't much of an opportunity, but Nitori wasn't about to waste it, either. While the girl was looking away, she carefully worked her handcuffs' chain off of the desk she was cuffed to. Then, moving in short, careful scoots, she very slowly worked her way across the room to where Sanae was sitting.

"Oh! You're free!" Sanae whispered over to her. "Does that mean you have a plan for getting us out of here?!"

"Eh? Er, not really..." Nitori gave her handcuffs a little shake. "These things are kappa-made. Unless you find a cutting torch under the desk or something, I'm not sure we're getting out of them."

"Oh..."

"What about your powers? You can still use them, right? Maybe somebody could make a distraction and you could..." Nitori trailed off. She wasn't entirely certain what Sanae's powers entailed. "... shoot snakes at them or something?"

"Maybe! A lot of my power comes from the goddesses, so ever since the lake got bombed, I'm kind of weak, so it's hard to say... I bet I can still make a really strong wind, though!"

"I don't know if that's going to cut it."

"Yeah..."

Nitori sighed and slumped down against the wall to consider their options. Not that it did her much good. She'd been thinking about that ever since this all started. She had plenty of tools that could take off the handcuffs... but they were all in the maintenance room, past the other kappa. So were her weapons, for that matter. They'd confiscated everything from her pockets, but missed a screwdriver, a tape measure, and a multimeter, none of which were exactly going to let her take on four armed kappa. Her ability was useless away from water. Sanae's abilities were weak right now. Hatate's ability was useless in general, Hina was as much of a threat to her allies as her enemies, and Rumi... most of what Nitori knew about Rumi was that she'd managed to rip off her own arm by accident, which didn't seem very promising.

Nitori sighed. "Hey, Sanae, can we, um... talk about a thing?"

"Huh? Sure, what is it?"

"It's just—okay, look, we're _probably_ not going to die here, but if we _do_ die, I'd rather get everything off my chest first. And, just... E-eh, jeez, I'm not any good at this stuff. Look: I think I like you. … there, I said it. I should have just done that in the first place instead of trying to make a production out of it."

She'd been trying to keep her voice down, but apparently she was just loud enough to be heard over the argument, since Hina beamed at her from halfway across the room and shot her a handcuffed thumbs up. Flushing deeply, Nitori shrank down to shield her face behind the brim of her hat.

Sanae was left looking at her in wide-eyed bewilderment. "Like... ' _like_ me' like me?"

"Was that even a sentence?"

"I mean! You like me... romantically?"

"Oh. … humans have some really weird lingo about this stuff. A-ah, but, I mean, yeah! Probably. … I don't know." She gave a frustrated grumble. "Look, jeez, I don't know anything about this stuff. Kappa don't really do romance, but if we did, it would be a lot less confusing. I mean, you've been doing romance for centuries, and you haven't even established diagnostic criteria for figuring out when you're in love or anything! That should be step _one_ , sheesh."

"O... kay. But you, um, do think you... you know? Like me like that?" After a moment, Sanae helpfully clarified, "Romantically, I mean?"

"I guess..."

Sanae nodded slowly, a slight flush rising to her own cheeks. "Well, this is kind of a weird time to tell me... but, hehe, that was a pretty cute confession!" She leaned forward, as far as her handcuffs would allow her, and gave Nitori a peck on the cheek. "It, um... it's something we can talk about more after we're out of here, I guess!"

"Yeah, sure," Nitori mumbled. Now she had all the more reason to come up with an escape plan.

* * *

The path from the shrine to the station was all downhill, but it was rugged terrain, and Kanako couldn't fly at the moment. In her rush, she'd thrown caution to the wind, sprinting downhill under the force of gravity, occasionally stumbling over patches of loose rocks or leaping over unexpected foliage. It was the first time she'd really run, rather than flown, in centuries, if not millennia, and it made a few things clear. For one thing, she'd let herself go in the past millennium or two. Also, she really needed to introduce Gensokyo to the concept of sports bras.

By the time the station came into view, she was wheezing and out of breath, and she could tell that she was going to be aching well into the next day. She skidded to a stop, creeping the last hundred meters or so, but it didn't look like anybody was keeping watch from the outside.

Suwako clambered up her ear to sit atop her head, peering out over the area. " _Ribbit._ "

"I don't know yet," Kanako said. She eased up along the side of the building and lowered her voice to a whisper. The walls were mostly soundproof, but she could just barely hear through them. She put her ear up to the wall and relayed her findings to Suwako. "It sounds like there are at least three or four of them. Even if they're normal humans, I'm not sure I can handle them in a fight right now. Hm. An ambush, maybe. If I make a spear and manage to lure them outside one at a time—"

" _Ribbit._ "

Kanako paused, glancing up toward the frog on her head. "If I can't handle them, I doubt a frog can."

" _Ribbit._ "

"... and you're serious?"

" _Ribbit._ "

Kanako crossed her arms and considered her options. She really couldn't handle much of a fight right now. Humans were one thing, but if the creatures inside were truly kappa—or worse, tengu—then they were well out of her league at the moment, spiritually wounded as she was. She hated to admit it, but she wasn't much of a sneak, either. Unless she wanted to wait out here and listen helplessly as Sanae suffered whatever fate was in store for her, she had few options but to cooperate with Suwako.

"Have it your way." Kanako reached up to scoop Suwako off of her head. "I can only get you inside, though. Past that, you're on your own."

Kanako crept along the wall until she reached a window. Fortunately, the building was old and leaky, and it was only a few seconds of work to ease it open far enough for Suwako to fit. She raised her hand, and the frog clambered up to sit inside the windowsill.

" _Ribbit._ "

"I hope so. And Suwako... be careful. I don't know if you care if you live or die, but I do."

She closed the window, and reluctantly, stepped back to let fate take its course.

And, started to look for spear-worthy sticks. Kanako had never been much of a believer in fate.

* * *

"Hey, look," Hatate hissed across the room. "That love confession was super-sweet or whatever, but don't we have more important stuff to worry about right now?!"

"Yeah, we do," Nitori whispered back. "But unless you've got any great plans for breaking out, I don't know if it will do us much good."

"Oh, yeah, I totally do. So what I'm thinking is, I pretend to be sick, right? Then when they come to check on me, you three jump on them and strangle them with those handcuffs."

"Oh, that's a neat plan!" Sanae said, then paused. "Why would all of them come to look at that, though? Wouldn't they just send one person?"

"I doubt they'd send _anybody_ ," Nitori said. "They're arguing about whether to execute us, so I doubt they care if you have a tummyache. Make a better plan before you start whining at us next time."

"I don't see you coming up with anything!"

"I'm trying, but..."

Nitori trailed off, as a green blur descended from a nearby shelf to land on Hatate's head with a wet, leathery slap. Hatate stiffened up, as a frog waddled over to stand atop her forehead.

"Whatever just happened, it felt super-gross," Hatate whimpered.

"It's Lady Suwako!" Sanae only barely managed to keep her voice quiet, and leaned in excitedly. "What are you doing here, though?! Are you here to rescue us?!"

" _Ribbit._ "

"I don't speak frog! Remember, two ribbits for yes, one ribbit for no."

" _Ribbit_ _ribbit_ _._ "

"Oh, good!"

"What good is a frog supposed to do?" Nitori asked.

"Um. Well..." Sanae glanced toward the back of the room. "They left the key on a desk back there! If you could get it, it would be a lot easier for us to escape or something!"

Suwako turned her head and peered toward the back of the station with her froggy eyes. Then, with a single confident, " _Ribbit,_ " she leapt off of Hatate's head and started hopping from desk to desk.


	15. Chapter 15

When Maeri had first spoken up, she hadn't expected that her objections would lead to an open confrontation with Touko. She wouldn't have stayed quiet if it she'd known anyway, but she might have made sure to load her crossbow first. There weren't many things scarier than an irate Touko.

They'd started out going in circles, with Touko arguing for flooding the village again, Ririsa cautiously uninterested, and Maeri arguing against them. At some point, Orisa had wandered back and joined in on Maeri's side, and through some miracle, Ririsa had come around to agree with them.

This wasn't as reassuring as Maeri had expected, since now Ririsa and Touko were almost at each other's throats, both of them brandishing weapons. Maeri wasn't sure which one would win if it came down to a fight, but she really didn't want to find out. At least, not without retreating to a safe observation distance first.

"It's over, Touko!" Ririsa flung her unoccupied hand into the air. "Flooding the village isn't going to fix things now! We should be looking for somewhere to lay low, not messing around here!"

"It's not 'messing around,' it's savin' your sorry hides! Lot of thanks I get though, huh? If you don't want to help, you can just leave, and leave your share of the loot behind!"

"Maybe I will!"

"Hey, look, no, you really need to calm down for a moment," Maeri interjected. "Whatever we do, we need to do it as a group. It doesn't do us any good if we lay low but Touko floods the village and starts a Gensokyo-wide manhunt looking for us. We should—"

"After everything we've gone through, you still want to follow this half-wit?"

"Who the _hell_ do you think you're callin' a—?!"

"—stop looking at Maeri like—!"

"—wipe that look off of your face—!"

The kappa fell into an outright screaming match, which only had a few seconds to build up before a gust of wind exploded into the room. It slammed against the walls and screamed as it whipped through the gaps between desks. Scattered papers filled the air, and the kappa cringed back, shielding their eyes.

There, at the front of the studio, Sanae was standing upright. Her hands were noticeably uncuffed. On the floor next to her, Nitori was already wrestling the key into her own handcuffs. … a frog was sitting on a desk next to them.

This raised a lot of questions, but Maeri didn't have long to consider them before Sanae thrust her hand forward again, blasting forward a wind that threatened to topple the kappa over.

"A-all of you, right now!" Sanae shouted, over the odd patter of airborne papers settling to the floor. "Surrender or I'll have to exterminate you! I'm here to resolve the incident of the Moriya lake bombing!"

Touko gritted her teeth. "Orisa, you dimwit, you were supposed to be watchin' the hostages!"

" _Don't_ call her a dimwit!" Maeri hissed.

Sanae took a step toward the group. Her fingertips gleamed with green pinpoints, supernatural energy building up for some attack. "Hey! I said surrender! I'll fight you if I have to!"

Touko hefted the bomb-filled backpack, giving a grunt under its weight. "You girls had your chance," she muttered.

"Wha—"

Maeri was cut off, as something fell from Touko's hand and clattered to the ground. In a matter of moments, half a dozen things happened. Smoke exploded from the grenade Touko had dropped, filling the cramped room in an instant. Sanae fired a spread of energy bullets, sending a ghostly green light flickering through the smoke cloud. Somebody's crossbow discharged in the confusion. Hurried footsteps cut through the smoke, and the station's back door flew open with a thump.

Another wave of bullets plowed into the wall behind them, briefly illuminating the cloud. It showed Maeri everything she needed to see, really—Touko's silhouette stepped through the back door and took off into the sky. Ririsa was hurrying in that direction too, blindly returning fire toward Sanae with her crossbow.

"Maeri." Orisa's hand wrapped around Maeri's and tugged her toward the door. "Run!"

* * *

Touko leapt into the air and took flight, only slightly slowed down by the heap of bombs on her back.

She only briefly looked back to make sure nobody was chasing after her. She caught a glimpse of the other kappa staggering out of the smoke-filled TV station, but they weren't her concern anymore. At this point, they'd still be useful, even if they were resolute about not helping her. They'd make for a nice decoy. If she was really lucky, that shrine maiden would follow them back to the hideout, and leave her in peace for what needed to be done.

Like all other kappa, Touko made plans in the same way she made a device, and this plan was no exception.

There were layer upon layer of contingencies to it, decisions about who she could afford to lose if it came down to it (Orisa) and decisions about who to keep on her side no matter what (Ririsa.) That was back at the beginning, though. She'd gone through that plan, made her choices, and now she was at the end. There was only one choice to be made, and she liked to think she could trust herself to make the right decision.

Touko didn't know it yet, but when the newest edition of the Gensokyo Chronicle was published, years in the future, it would have this to say about her motivations: _"It's hard to say what led a kappa, usually a peaceful race, to become so violent and hateful. This is complicated by the fact that Touko was very old, and the few kappa who knew her before she was banished prefer not to talk about the subject. I have a theory, though: I think that some formative event early in her life led Touko to hate humans. It would explain a lot of her behavior."_

It was pure speculation, and it was wrong. Touko had no particular reason to hate humans, or anybody in general, really. She'd simply concluded, at a very young age, that the quickest path to success usually passed through somebody's chest and involved an exit wound. She liked it that way. Dog-eat-dog wasn't a bad way to live, assuming you never ran into a bigger dog.

Now, Touko had only one goal in mind: open the Moriya shrine lake again and finish what she'd started. Once the human village was flooded for good and she was vindicated, she could worry about keeping the rest of Gensokyo off her back.

* * *

Smoke filled the station, thick enough that it blocked out the lights and obscured all vision. The air in every direction was filled with coughing and panicked movement. Nitori stumbled toward the doorway, groping her way along the wall and barely able to see half a meter in front of her face.

She was picking her way past a desk when a gust of wind cut through the smoke. Blessed, fresh air washed across her face, and light filtered back in. At the head of the wind, Sanae was standing, her arms outstretched and her clothes billowing. She kept it up until the last of the smoke had blown out the door, leaving only a smell that would linger for months. Then, she hunched over, coughing.

"A-ah, what happened?!"

"One of them dropped a smoke grenade, I think..."

"I hope they're running really quick," Hatate griped, as she struggled with her handcuffs. "These clothes are going to need washed like fifty times before they smell okay again."

Through gritted teeth, Nitori replied, "I don't think that's the main issue here."

Sanae pushed herself to standing and took a breath to steady herself, then glanced out the back door. "Where do you think they went? If it's back to that cave, it's easy to find them, but..."

"The lake," Rumi said urgently, squirming against her own restraints. The key hadn't made its way over to her yet, so she was still pitiably shackled to a desk. "Touko will go to the lake. Um. She's _really_ mad."

"The lake? … wait, those bombs! Did she take them with her?!"

Rumi glanced toward where the sack had been laying, then nodded mutely, ashamed of herself.

"I've got to...! Um! Ah!" Sanae glanced from the doorway, to Suwako, to Nitori anxiously before making a decision. "Nitori! Please help the others get free! Um, Lady Kanako is probably around here somewhere, so try to find her and let her know what's going on!"

"Ah, uh, sure. You're going to stop her, right?"

"I have to! We can't let her blow up the lake again! It would... it would be really bad!"

"... well, yeah, it would. I'll catch up with you. And, uh, Sanae?"

Sanae had already started toward the door, but now paused, looking back. "Huh?"

"... try not to get hurt, alright?"

* * *

From her guard post on the bridge, Momiji had gotten quite a show today.

First had been the column of water rising up from the human village. She'd worried it was the start of some kind of incident, until she'd spotted Sanae at the middle (notes: hair uncombed, slightly sleep-deprived, a fleck of blueberry stuck in her teeth) of the storm and figured out what was happening. It was still noteworthy enough for her to call in some assistance in case anything came out of it.

Next had been a group of kappa walking up the mountainside toward the TV station. Over the past week, she'd kept observations on the various groups of kappa around the mountain. These ones, she'd already been very suspicious of before. Now, seeing them march purposely toward the station with crossbows over their shoulders, those suspicions were rather more pointed.

Next, Sanae, Nitori, another kappa, and a dog had walked up a similar path (the kappa: tall, white hair, bags under eyes indicating recent stress or sleeplessness. The dog: Big, white, tongue always hanging out of its mouth, male) and entered the station. Twenty minutes later, Kanako Yasaka had approached to put a frog in through the window. Shortly afterward, smoke had billowed out and the four kappa had fled.

Three had gone toward their hideout. One had gone toward the lake, with Sanae Kochiya in pursuit.

Momiji watched the two sets of flying figures for twenty seconds while she made a decision. She glanced to her partner for today's patrol. He was a wolf tengu—young, barely into his fifth or sixth decade. Barely old enough to know which end of the sword to hold, as far as she was concerned. "How much combat experience do you have?"

Without missing a beat, he answered, "Thirty years of training fights, two border skirmishes with oni raids from the underworld, and one spell card encounter with the Moriya shrine maiden, ma'am."

"Ah. That isn't bad for your age, but I think we'll need more." Momiji hefted her sword up to rest across her shoulders. "Run back to headquarters and tell them that I need to activate a squad. Tell them to load up for a punitive expedition."

* * *

Sanae flew like a human rocket, her arms at her sides, her eyes squinting against the wind. She was flying as quickly as she could, headed straight for the lake. The kappa had a head start on her, but Sanae had something that no kappa could match: She controlled the air itself.

Or, at least, she could for the moment. She wasn't sure how much longer she could keep it up. The bombing of the lake had left her powers much weaker than usual, and after channeling a grand miracle today without quite enough preparation, she felt like she'd run a marathon and then sat down for a few final exams back to back. Her brain was fuzzy and her limbs were shaking, but she couldn't afford to back off now. Not if she didn't want the village to end up underwater. Not if she wanted Suwako to be alive tomorrow.

A small dot appeared in front of her, skimming across the treetops. Soon, she'd gotten close enough to make out the fugitive kappa. She dipped down, shedding altitude until she was at the same height as Touko. She pushed onward, until she was moving so quickly that the wind burned her cheeks and tugged on her clothes. She wasn't quite fast enough, though. As she drew closer, she could see the shimmer of the lake through the trees ahead.

She couldn't waste any more time. "Stop and fight me!" Sanae gritted her teeth, straining against the wind and thrusting an arm out for an attack. Spears of glowing energy arced out from her fingers at irregular angles, looping through the air before spearing down toward Touko from every direction. They lunged inward, and Touko barely noticed them in time. She gave an outraged shout that was audible even over the wind and dove down between the trees. The lances of energy followed her, weaving back and forth as they gave chase, but one by one, they dwindled away and flickered out of existence.

"Figured you might come, shrine maiden!" Touko shouted back over her shoulder, once she'd risen above the treetops again.

"M-my name is Sanae Kochiya!" Sanae shouted against the wind. "If you want to attack that lake again, you have to go through me!"

"Looks like it!" Touko shot her a sharp-edged grin, then reached back to the overstuffed bag on her back. "That Nitori girl tell you what my specialty is?"

Before Sanae could answer, Touko's hand casually pulled something from her bag and tossed it out. A small silver sphere plummeted toward the ground, glittering in the light. Sanae swerved wide to avoid it, afraid it might be a bomb or something, but before the thing had fallen a few meters, it burst open. Twin rotors unfolded from the top, and the equator erupted into a band of jagged sawblades, which filled the air with a high-pitched whine as the device came to life. Following some unknown sense, it pivoted around and homed in on Sanae with surprising speed.

Sanae screeched to a stop, hovering backward into a defensive posture in the air. The buzzing machine orbited her in a drunken circle before it turned and dove in for the kill. It was the first good shot Sanae got at it, but it was enough. She blasted a single beam of light from her fingertip, blowing a hole right through the center. Something inside continued buzzing, struggling against half-melted mechanisms. It wasn't enough to keep itself airborne, and the defeated machine streaked toward the ground.

But, it had served Touko's purposes. She'd built up a decent lead again while Sanae dealt with it, leaving her just barely close enough for Sanae to hear her cackle and shout back, "Takin' on a kappa weaponsmith, kid! In her own element!"

Passing the edge of the treeline, Touko folded her arms in, letting herself fall toward the lake like a stray bullet. Sanae dove after her, but she was too slow. She arrived just in time to see the splash as Touko pierced the water's surface, soon disappearing into its depths. Before long, even the ripples had faded, taking the only hint to her location. Sanae was left hovering above the lake, watching its placid surface for any sign of movement.

"I don't know why you're doing this!" she shouted down at the water's surface, without letting her guard up for a moment. "But I won't let you win!"

She was answered only by the echo of her voice against the far side of the lake. "Somebody like you could never win! Not when there's a hero around to stop you!" The line had probably come from some half-remembered anime, but right now, it was just the right kind of cheesy certainty that she needed.

It was a nice sentiment, but here in reality, she really felt like she needed a nap, and she wasn't sure how long her powers were hold out. If they had a real fight, she'd be lucky if she didn't end up crashing into the lake out of one form of exhaustion or another.

Soon, though, much more immediate problems announced themselves. A few trails of bubbles in the lake's depths caught the light, and she made out dark silhouettes at their peaks. A split second later, four missiles the size of soda cans burst from the water's surface, corkscrewing through the air before they all turned to streak toward her.

The fight had begun.

* * *

By the time the kappa reached the hideout again, they'd given up on anything except moving as quickly as possible. Even Ririsa had put her crossbow away in favor of speed, leaving it jostling against her back as she sprinted the last few meters into the main cavern.

"There's no—" Maeri stumbled to a stop and wheezed for air. It was very hard for a youkai to be out of shape, but she was about as close as they got. "Th-there's no way Touko will let us get away if she thinks she can stop us. She'll be looking for us. Our first priority should be covering our tracks. After we get out of here, of course."

Ririsa gave a disinterested grunt as she headed toward her room. "I've never been hunted by humans and youkai at the same time. Might be fun."

"I doubt it would meet even your warped standards for fun," Maeri said.

"It's called sarcasm, princess. Hurry up and grab your stuff. If that lake's going up again, I want to be moving while everybody's attention's on it."

Orisa gave Maeri's hand a squeeze. "I'll go," she mumbled. "Watch the door."

"Don't overburden yourself, okay? We can replace whatever we leave here later."

Orisa nodded, but lingered. "... be careful." She took a hesitant step backward, then turned and hurried toward the living area.

And, Maeri was left alone in the main chamber by herself. She shot a worried glance toward the front entrance, but there was of course nobody there. Not that she could count on that kind of thing for long. No matter what happened out there, it seemed like bad news for her. If Touko won, she'd chase them down on sheer principle of the matter. If youkai exterminators took her down, they'd be next on the list, and Rumi knew right where to find them.

Maeri sighed and smoothed out her dress. It was one of her nicer ones, even, with a cute pattern of calico cats frolicking along the carefully-chosen lines of the seams. She wouldn't be getting any more presents like this from Orisa any time soon, she supposed. As many people as would be hunting for them after this, she'd be lucky if they could gather enough material to make a handkerchief, let alone gowns.

Maeri's misplaced self-pity was interrupted by a dull _thump_ from outside. She raised her crossbow and warily pointed it at the doorway, but the sound was followed by another, and another. Soon, she could hear the muffled sound of conversation coming from outside... and it sounded like there were three or four people, at least.

"W-who's there! Show yourselves!" Maeri squeaked, taking a step back.

A firm, confident voice answered her, magnified by the cavern's echoes. "Momiji Inubashiri, of the Tengu Defense Corps! Surrender for questioning, and you won't be harmed." Heavy, unhurried footsteps proceeded down the tunnel. Maeri took twice as many steps backward, not letting her crossbow waver a centimeter the entire time. "If you don't surrender..."

Momiji stepped from the tunnel's mouth and into the cavern. She hefted a sword that was bigger than Maeri was from her back, letting the tip rest on the cave floor. "... then I'll offer you the honor of dueling me." Even in the low light, Maeri could make out the white points of her canines as she smirked.

* * *

The Moriya shrine lake, ostensibly part of Suwako's soul, had been turned into a churning mass of horrors. However much weaponry Touko had taken down there, she seemed intent on expending every single piece of it on Sanae before she surrendered. Heat-seeking drones burst from the depths to chase her. Balloons with explosives floated up, blasting up clouds of steam when they detonated. Harpoons and crossbow bolts arced into the air and splashed back down into the lake after she dodged them. And still, the assault kept coming.

Just in time, Sanae spotted a dim red line glowing in the lake. She dodged aside, just as a scattershot burst of shrapnel exploded out, whipping the surface into a froth and shredding the tree canopy behind her. It was followed by another, and another, with the last one coming close enough that Sanae could feel it slice off some of her hair.

It wasn't entirely bad, though. The laser sight gave Sanae a good idea of where her assailant was on the lake's floor. Before Touko could reload or pull out another weapon, Sanae dropped from the air, kneeling and pressing a hand to the ground. She lowered her head, clenched her eyes shut, and murmured an earnest, pleading prayer to the soil itself. She'd barely finished the final word when a splash from the lake told her that something else had surfaced.

A few pairs of orange pontoons bobbed atop the lake. Floating on them, small turrets spun around blindly, until a laser sight rose from the depths again. Each turret followed it, and the second it caught up to her, they all fired. The air filled with thunderous snaps of discharging energy, and needle-like metal projectiles whizzed through the air. Sanae sidestepped them, but the turrets kept tracking her. She didn't dare to slow down, rolling and diving through the air, taking every action she could think of to buy herself time and praying that her gambit had worked.

It did.

The laser sight flickered and disappeared, and the turrets fell into chaos again. A heavy tremor shuddered through the lake, like the footstep of a giant. A pair of red lights glowed in its depths, then rose with a low roar of displaced water. The white form of a mishaguji was visible for just a moment before it burst from the water's surface, with Touko clenched between its jaws.

The massive, primal curse god was just big enough to hold her snugly, leaving the kappa thrashing in outrage and struggling to break free. The mishaguji's oily scales gleamed in the sunlight, while its eyes still managed to shine with a sickly red glow. Sanae had seen them dozens of times before, and they always gave her nightmares for a week afterward. Calling them up was reckless, an emergency measure at best. Suwako was the only one they'd obey unquestioningly. Later, they would demand some sacrifice for this service. But for the moment, the battle was won.

Sanae floated down to Touko's level, while the mishaguji gave the thrashing kappa a warning squeeze, biting down on her so hard that Sanae could practically hear her ribs creak. Touko gave a groan of pain, cursing under her breath, and punched futilely at the snake's jaw.

"Y-you've hurt a lot of people!" Sanae's voice nearly cracked from exhaustion, but she managed to keep it together, thrusting an accusing finger at Touko. "If you're not going to have a spell card duel, I guess I just have to exterminate you!"

Touko gave a low, wheezing chuckle. "That so? You think..." She trailed off for a moment, coughing. The mishaguji didn't show any mercy, tightening its grip to squeeze her more firmly. "You think you're the first human to tell me that? I'm five hundred years old, kid."

"I'm not a kid! And I might not be the first, but I'm going to be the last!" There was no sense in making this a fair fight. Sanae floated back and swept her arm forward, pulling on her rapidly-dwindling pool of divine power. Pinpoints of energy flared on her fingertips, glowing white-hot until the heat was stinging even her. She gritted her teeth and pushed past the pain, letting the power swell until it grew far past anything she used for spell cards, shaping it into deadly projectiles.

But, Touko had managed to wriggle her hand free on her far side, and tugged a weapon from her pocket. She discharged it with a concussive pop, spraying ball bearings into the roof of the mishaguji's mouth. The creature gave a roar of outrage, its entire body writhing in pain. It gave Touko a squeeze that threatened to pop her head off, but she followed it up with another attack, then another. Viscous black blood drooled out of the jaw, and the mishaguji finally relented. It leaned back, slamming Touko into the lake's surface, then retreated back into the depths.

Sanae wasn't sure if she was going to get another opportunity. She fired her attack toward the spot where Touko had vanished, and five lances of green energy plowed into the lake's surface, blowing up a cloud of steam. Moments later, Touko rebounded and burst from the surface. She didn't bother with another taunt. She took off, skimming across the lake's surface, and whirled around to empty the rest of her weapon at Sanae. She was holding a small pistol, and it seemed to be made for short range. She fired four more shots into the air, and by the time the attacks reached Sanae, the bearings were so weak that they barely stung when a few brushed her skin. Touko tossed the useless weapon aside, and Sanae prepared to retaliate.

A helix of gleaming points burst from Sanae's hand, and Touko scrambled forward to avoid them. Instead, they spattered into the lake's surface, working a patch of it into a steaming froth. Sanae didn't let up, firing another, and another, not giving her the time for a counterattack, but she was starting to falter. She needed to finish this now, or she was going to be too tired to continue. Sanae drew her hands back, summoning the very last bit of power she could scrape off the walls of her soul and channeling it into a single attack. The air in front of her exploded into a light show as a vast array of bullets shimmered into being.

They swept forward, with such force that the lake's surface was whipped into a stormlike frenzy of waves beneath them. Two great walls of bullets closed in on Touko from either side, and while she outran the first ranks, she couldn't keep it up forever. They closed in around her like a pair of jaws, pelting her from every direction. With the sheer magnitude of the attack, Sanae hadn't been able to put much force into them, but they were still enough to batter her down, making her bounce against the lake's surface like a ping pong ball. Wave after wave of them crashed into her... until they passed. Touko barely managed to reach the shore before she collapsed.

It was a welcome sight, since Sanae was reaching her own limits. She dropped down, and didn't even manage a safe landing, stumbling when she hit the ground. Wheezing for air, she stumbled closer. Touko was collapsed in her side, her eyes closed and her hands balled into fists. Sanae wasn't sure she could even summon enough power for a single attack right now, let alone finish off a kappa. There was nothing she was going to be able to do to take out a youkai with her bare hands. But, she could at least confiscate that backpack and make sure things didn't get worse until help could arrive.

After watching Touko for a few seconds, Sanae cautiously crept toward her, watching for any sign of movement from the kappa.

She only spotted it a moment too late. One of Touko's hands was balled into a fist, and a red dot shined out from inside. It was little except a miniature laser pointer. Before Sanae could even realize what it meant, the three floating turrets on the lake's surface all discharged. The air filled with reverberating thumps of force, and something pierced into Sanae's side. Electricity slammed into her like a moving truck. Her muscles locked up, aching and convulsing. Sanae sprawled to the ground.

* * *

Orisa, Maeri, and Ririsa stood at attention, being very careful not to make any sudden movements or look threatening.

Very few people would dare to do either of those things when there were half a dozen unfriendly tengu with swords and crossbows lined up between them and freedom. That went double when one of those tengu was Momiji Inubashiri, whose sword probably weighed more than any of the kappa, and who, rumor had it, had once ripped the arms off a bear and beaten a second bear to death with them.

In general, Gensokyo's rumors weren't very reliable, but seeing her in person, it was hard to convince oneself to risk it.

"I'm going to ask you some questions," Momiji said. She was standing at the front of the tengu formation, and was no longer bothering to keep her sword at the ready. "If I think you're lying to me, I'll take you to my superiors. They'll ask you the same questions, but I should warn you that they've been in a very bad mood, since somebody has been running around claiming to be tengu and destroying human houses."

Momiji paused for a moment. The sound of the three kappa trembling was practically audible, even without a tengu's sharpened sense of hearing. "If there aren't any complaints, allow me to start."

Momiji's questioning was firm, but straightforward. She grilled them on every angle of their activities over the past few weeks. "The kappa who flew toward the Moriya Shrine earlier—was she your leader?" "Are there any other members of your group who aren't in this room?" "You disguised yourselves as tengu during your attacks. Why?"

Most of them, Maeri answered. Ririsa shot her the occasional betrayed glance early on, but Maeri shrugged them off. She had a finely-honed self-preservation instinct.

After what seemed like an eternity of questioning, Momiji gave a satisfied nod to herself. "Good. Your cooperation is appreciated," she said, with a bureaucratic lack of warmth. "I'm going to offer you a choice. I'd like you to think very hard about it. On the way here, we sighted the Hakurei shrine maiden on patrol. It would seem that you've drawn her ire. So, one option is to turn you over to her, to be punished for your crimes against humanity as she sees fit."

"On the other hand," Momiji continued, once they'd had a few seconds to marinate in their terror, "by endangering the human village and harming human-tengu relations, you've also committed crimes against youkai. Those youkai who are too dangerous to live on the surface are usually banished to the underworld. Conveniently, all of the caves in this area lead to the underworld if you travel far enough."

Maeri glanced back toward the tunnel at the back of the cave. "There are traps back there. Our boss—er, _former_ boss—filled it with them, because, er..."

"Even if the traps didn't get us..." Ririsa shook her head, giving a grim chuckle. "We'd have to be stupid. We'd be eaten alive. There are oni down there. And satori."

"Yes." Momiji allowed the slightest hint of a smile onto her face. Maeri had honestly preferred her without it. "And there's a Hakurei shrine maiden up here. I'm told that she's spent the last five days mostly sleepless and looking for you. I'm sure she would be excited to finally meet you."

Momiji hadn't even finished the sentence before Maeri finished considering the options. "I... yes, I understand. Thank you for your mercy." She grabbed Orisa's hand and met her eyes. Orisa gave a nod of understanding. The two turned and took off for the back of the cavern, and didn't even stop to talk until the first sounds of discharging traps echoed through the cave, followed by yelps of surprise. Ririsa was right behind them, cursing at the top of her lungs.

* * *

Sanae wasn't sure what had hit her, but it had certainly done the job. Wave after wave of pain had wracked her body, followed by a numbing stiffness. Now, she was curled up on the ground, clutching her legs and half-paralyzed. The base of the projectile still stuck out from its impact point on her torso, a slim black cylinder the size of a finger. Her vision was blurred, her heart felt like it was going to burst from her chest, but she was alive. For the moment, at least.

"Well, shrine maiden." Touko gave a grunt of mixed effort and pain as she rocked herself up to sitting, then rose from the ground. She was worse for the wear, herself. Her backpack was nearly empty, after using most of her weapons, but it threatened to pull her over. "You didn't do too bad, for a human."

Sanae was wheezing for breath through clenched teeth, so she couldn't offer Touko much of a retort. Touko simply grinned at that, seeming revitalized by her misery. "Bad luck that it was a shock dart that hit ya. Anything else would've put you out of your misery a mite faster." She limped over and bent down, tugging the projectile from Sanae's side. Two thin, blood-covered needles pulled free, still smelling like ozone and smoke from discharging their payload. Touko gave it an appreciative look before tossing it aside. "Guess I've just gotta handle it myself, huh?"

Sanae shuddered on the ground, trying to force her muscles to cooperate and shout for help, but she felt like a pile of quivering jelly. All she managed was a low wheeze. Touko chuckled and kicked off the ground to float into the air. "Don't worry, though, I ain't one of those mean youkai. I'll make it real quick. Still got to finish with this lake, y'know." She patted at many pockets until she produced a bulky gun, which looked like the offspring of a squirt gun and a cartoon chemistry set. She primed something on the side and closed one eye, lining it up with Sanae. "Just hold real still, now."

There was no hope of Sanae standing any time soon. She managed to prop herself up on an elbow before she slumped back down to the ground. Her breath caught in her throat as she waited for the inevitable.

Instead, a sound like a dozen sizzling pans of bacon, in the bottom of a distant well, rumbled from Touko's backpack.

The space around her warped like the reflection in a puddle, and a subtle blue glow jittered around the edges

The scent of ozone and tar rushed out to fill the air, so heavy that it was palpable.

Touko froze in realization, then reached back and tore her backpack off. The air around her pulsated like a beating heart, centered on the bag. "The hell is—?!"

She didn't get to finish her sentence. The distortions vanished, with the suddenness of a snapping string. The gravity around her reversed. Like a shot from a cannon, Touko shot up into the sky. There was a palpable rush of air as the void she'd left behind was filled.

A sharp _crack_ , like thunder, echoed across Gensokyo. In her woozy state, it took Sanae a moment to realize where she'd heard it before: A sonic boom.

"Sanae!"

Two pairs of feet settled to the ground, and only once Sanae tried focusing on the faces did she realize her vision was a little blurry. They only slowly resolved into Nitori and Rumi. Nitori hurried over to inspect her, with her hands hovering indecisively between tugging her clothes aside and not. "Are you okay?! You don't look good. Er, well, I mean, that's obvious, but you know. What did she do?!"

That actually wasn't Sanae's main concern, though. She glanced toward the sky in tired confusion. Touko was no longer even visible. "She..." Sanae wheezed. "S-she sh..." It was all the coordination she could coax out of her aching body.

"She shot you?" Rumi guessed. "She... shoved you? Oh! She shoveled you?"

"What the heck is that supposed to mean?" Nitori asked.

"Like, um. Hit her with a shovel? I bet she had one."

"S-shocked me," Sanae finally stammered out.

"Ohhh. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense."

"A shock, huh?" Nitori carefully peeled Sanae's robe aside to inspect the skin beneath the slightly bloodstained patch on the front. "The good news is, you're still breathing, and it doesn't look like it did much damage. You'll probably be fine. … trust me, I'm a kappa. I've been shocked a few times in my life."

"Good. Thanks." Every syllable Sanae forced out felt like a punch to her stomach, but the pain was ebbing away. She glanced up toward the sky, and flinched as Nitori closed her robe over her wound again. "The bombs... went off."

"Oh. Um." Rumi held up her hand and spread her fingers. A small black device with a red button was concealed between them. "They dropped their things when they ran. There were extra detonators..."

"Seems like she's... g-going a lot higher than I did."

"Uh-huh." Rumi looked up at the sky. "Each bomb makes it go faster. Um. One bomb... is as fast as falling, but up. Two bombs is twice as fast, and..."

Nitori glanced over. "How many of them did she have?"

Rumi pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Twelve or so? They only work for about ten seconds, though..."

"Ten seconds at 10G gets you to a kilometer a second." Nitori rocked back on her heels and followed Rumi's gaze upward. "... I wonder how far it is to space?"

* * *

It hadn't taken long for the word to get out: The Moriya shrine maiden had cleared the flooded portion of the village. The houses were open, the day was saved, and all that was left now was the messy business of getting two dozen families back to their houses. It had left the Hieda manor even busier than it had been in the night after the flooding. Before, the refugees had trickled in a few families at a time. Now, they were all in a rush to leave. Carts hurried in and out of the front gate. Weaving between them, families walked with their belongings on their backs, looking happy for the first time in days.

Akyuu and Kosuzu sat on the front step, watching all of this. It was one of the nicest sights Akyuu had ever seen... if only because her servants were all too busy dealing with the situation to disturb her. After returning from her kidnapping, she'd only barely been able to talk them out of immediately sequestering her in her room under armed guard. As for Kosuzu... Kosuzu just seemed to be avoiding the consequences of admitting to her parents that she'd snuck out to investigate rumors about ghosts in the middle of the night.

It was pleasant like this, anyway. The only problem was that the mostly-sleepless night had taken its toll on Akyuu's normal lack of stamina. She mostly wanted to take a nap, but it could wait. There was history in the making, after all, and she had a duty.

"Everything should be okay now, right?" Kosuzu said, looking out over the crowd. "The village is back to normal, and with Miss Sanae chasing after them, there's no way those kappa got away."

"I'd like to think so, but we shouldn't count our chickens yet. There's still a lot of work to do around the village. Some houses were destroyed in the flood, and even the ones that are still standing will need a lot of cleaning and repairs. If other youkai take advantage of the chaos..."

"You really don't ever relax, do you?"

Akyuu trailed off with a self-conscious smile. "Relaxing isn't in the Child of Miare's job description. It's enough for me to know that for now, Gensokyo is safe. I... perhaps got a rather closer view of the incident than I prefer to, but since we got out unharmed, I can't complain."

"Mmhm." Kosuzu leaned back against the wall and yawned, looking up at the sky. The clouds Sanae had summoned from the floodwater were starting to disperse, letting the blue sky shine through.

As she watched, a point of light grew out of nothingness in a few seconds, until it was as bright as a star, streaking down toward the ground. "Oh! Look!" She leaned forward, pointing up at it. "A shooting star! That's a good omen, right?"

"Different cultures interpret them in different ways... but they usually are, yes." She frowned to herself, thoughtful. "I didn't think there were any meteor showers at this time of year, though. And it seems really bright. It might be landing in Gensokyo."

"Oh! We should make wishes on it!"

Akyuu shook her head and laid back on the floor, relaxing with a yawn. "You can if you'd like. Personally, I'm happy enough that everything is going back to normal."


	16. Epilogue - One Week Later

The underworld was no place for a kappa.

There wasn't much water, for one thing. The water all trickled down from aquifers above, then flowed through the capital in a series of shallow canals. They weren't even deep enough to hide in, let alone conceal an underwater hideout. More importantly, the underworld's denizens were the roughest and worst that Gensokyo had to offer. Most of them weren't too bad as long as you didn't cross them, but that wasn't much of a guarantee. Knowing that only one in a hundred oni were belligerent jerks was only reassuring if you didn't see a few hundred oni a week.

Ririsa just tried to keep her head down as she shuffled down the street. Fortunately, the noisy center of the city was behind her. This far out, she only saw the occasional youkai pedestrian. A few of them cast lingering glances at the bundle on her back; a quick flash of her crossbow was enough to scare them off. For most youkai of the underworld, knowing how to avoid an unnecessary fight was a survival skill.

The house they'd picked out was nearly a kilometer from the city's center. It made for a bit of a walk to go shopping, but that was a small price to pay for solitude. Like most others in the underworld, it was made from a combination of imported wood and local stone. The lack of weather meant that while wood was scarce, it would stand for ages. The place had been unused for apparent decades, if not centuries, before they'd moved into it, and the worst damage had been a few missing shingles on the roof.

The ancient wood of the front steps creaked under Ririsa's feet. She opened the door and navigated her oversized bundle inside. "I'm back."

The front room of the house was some uneasy combination of living room and communal workshop. A kotatsu sat in the middle, useful year-round in the chilly cavern, and scattered around it were toolboxes, bolts of cloth, piles of books, half-finished projects, blueprints, and drifting piles of notes. Near the back, in a small clearing next to a tailor's dummy, Orisa and Maeri were sitting on the floor, looking at a slate covered in scribbled designs. Orisa gave a disinterested grunt of acknowledgment, while Maeri looked up. "Welcome back. Did that last dress sell well? We did try to tailor it more to the expectations of an oni..."

"Fifteen hundred yen." Ririsa crossed to the center of the room and shoved a collection of wrench heads off the kotatsu, making room to lower her bundle. "It's enough for now. I think you'd do better making a lot of small stuff. Ribbons to tie onto horns or whatever."

"I make dresses. Not those things," Orisa muttered. She marked out a few more lines on her slate, then glanced over at the bundle. "What's that?"

"Probably a mistake." Ririsa tugged on the knot keeping the cloth tied together. The ends fell apart, revealing... a television. "... shopkeeper said they started running repeaters down into the caves."

"I really think I've seen enough of those things," Maeri sighed, but leaned over to inspect it. "Still... it would be nice to find out what's going on up there. Whether or not Touko is still on the loose, at the very least."

"Yeah, exactly. If we don't keep an eye on the news, we'll never know when it's safe to head back up, right?"

"Not worried about Touko," Orisa said. "... that wolf."

There was an uncomfortable silence. None of them wanted to admit that they were _afraid_ of a tengu. They just _were_. It was a simple fact of life. Maeri was the one to break it. "Well, it's about time for the news anyway, right? We might as well see what it says."

She turned the television on and flopped back to sit amidst the mess on the floor. Hina's chipper expression beamed out from the television, and all three kappa immediately glanced aside guiltily. The studio was tied to some distinctly bad memories in their heads.

Today's news seemed pretty routine. The Hakurei shrine had held a festival for a holiday nobody had ever heard of to try drumming up revenue. Religious tensions had flared up after a hermit's personal jiang-shi was discovered trying to eat a Jizo statue. A firefly youkai had been offering to keep people's crops bug-free in exchange for a small payment of food.

"Boring," Orisa grumbled.

"It must be a slow news day," Maeri said.

The scene switched back from a brief interview with the firefly youkai back to the studio. _"That's all we have for tonight. Thank you for watching, Gensokyo!"_ Hina said cheerfully from the speakers. _"Before we play the next program, we have a brief announcement of station-related business. Have a good evening!"_

There were a few seconds of muffled off-screen conversation and movement. A squat box slid across the desk to rest near the center of the screen.

Rumi stepped out behind it.

Ririsa stared at the TV in a mix of annoyance and disbelief. "What in the heck is _she_ doing on there?"

"Maybe if you're quiet, we can find out," Maeri said.

 _"Good, um, good evening, Gensokyo,"_ Rumi said, with her eyes drifting around everywhere but the camera. _"I'm, um... I'm the station's new, um, research and development head, and I wanted to show you... this."_

Somebody said something offscreen, too low to understand. Rumi looked toward the speaker, and they had a brief, whispered exchange. A hand poked in offscreen and offered her a card. She accepted it and read from it, with all the natural grace and charisma of a turnip. _"A-ah, um! It's called the holographic... television. Now you, um, you too can see all of your... many favorite shows and movies.. in deli-full—"_ A sharp whisper corrected her offscreen. _"Oh,_ _ **delight**_ _ful... 3D. We hope that you will enjoy this, um, product, which will soon be available from... from our retail business partners. Um. So. … here it is."_

Rumi lowered the card and squatted down behind the desk to press a button on the box. Above it, lights flickered in the air, and soon settled into a scene from a movie, with little three-dimensional cars the size of Rumi's hand engaged in a late-night chase, screeching around obstacles within the confines of the box. Rumi beamed down at the scene and poked a finger into one of the cars, making it shimmer and distort. _"We're still kind of working on it, but, um, I like it. It feels really trapping movie people inside a flat little box, even if they're just—"_

Before she could finish that thought, the device jolted beneath her finger. The illusionary cars flickered and vanished in a puff of static, and sparks and smoke exploded out from the side. Rumi stumbled back with a surprised squeak. Several voices started shouting all at once, and somebody rushed forward to dump a bucket of water over the whole mess.

The screen went black. A few seconds later, with no transition or explanation, a movie started.

"And yet _we're_ supposedly the dangerous ones," Maeri sighed.

* * *

Coughing, Rumi waved a hand to clear the last of the smoke from in front of her face. On the desk, the holographic television prototype was still giving the occasional sizzle deep in its guts, but for the most part, it seemed thoroughly dead. The water slowly dripped to the floor, forming a puddle beneath her feet.

"I'm sorry...! I don't know what happened... It was working fine before. Um. Maybe it doesn't like it when I touch the holograms like that..."

"Well, you can always try again." Hina sat the bucket aside, then paused, frowning thoughtfully. "I hope water isn't too bad for it?"

"I think catching on fire is a lot worse for it. Maybe it will be ready tomorrow..."

"But in the meantime, there's, like, a gigantic puddle of water on the desk," Hatate said. She was reclined behind the mixing desk, with her feet propped up on one of the few areas that wasn't covered in buttons. She didn't look up from her camera as she spoke. "Maybe, yannow, clean that up? That shopkeeper's show starts in half an hour, and he'll be coming by to set up or whatever soon."

"Oh! Right. … sorry." Rumi sat the television aside and searched around until she found a towel to start swabbing the puddle up with.

The door to the maintenance room opened, and Nitori stepped out. "Jeez, what was all that noise? … did you guys set something on fire out here?"

There was no immediate answer. Mostly, because Nitori was in an outfit unlike any of them had ever seen on her—a white tank top with fat gray stripes, a blue blouse unbuttoned over it, and a pair of forest green shorts. She had a _purse_.

Every eye was on Nitori, and she shrunk back under the attention, blushing and glancing aside. "What are you staring at me for?! I asked a question!"

"O-oh, um, right...! It..." Rumi hefted the still-dripping prototype and gave it a demonstrative shake. Something inside rattled. There were not supposed to be rattly parts in there. "It died."

"Eh? Do you know what went wrong?"

Rumi shook her head.

"Do you even know what component failed or anything?"

"If I knew how it worked, I wouldn't be able to make it..."

Nitori held her gaze for a moment, then shook her head, sighing to herself. "Right, yeah. Well, keep at it. You can borrow my tools if you need, but don't let your dog around them. The last time he got ahold of them, they were all... slobbery."

"Right...!"

"Today's your first date with Sanae, isn't it?" Hina asked, smiling.

"A-ah, uh, I guess it is, huh? It almost slipped my mind." Nitori gave a nervous laugh and crossed over to stand closer to the others. "She said she didn't want to make a big deal of it, so I should wear 'modern, casual' clothes. Like that means anything to me, jeez."

"I mean, she's dating a kappa," Hatate said. "As long as you don't show up, like, covered in industrial solvent, you'll probably be doing better than her expectations."

"Shut up! I'm already nervous, and you aren't really helping!"

"I'm sure you'll do fine," Hina said. "You and Sanae have talked plenty of times, right? Just think of it as another conversation, and try not to worry too much."

"Easier said than done..."

"And..." Hina hesitated with a sigh, glancing aside guiltily. "Please let her know that I'm sorry, again. I... think that spending so much time around my misfortune is the reason she got shot."

"The reason she got shot is that Touko pointed a gun at her and pulled the trigger. Don't beat yourself up about it." After a moment, Nitori added, "... seriously, though, we need to do something else to make it safer. Maybe get yousome kind of coat with charms woven into it."

"Oh! Oh! Um." As usual, Rumi's mind was about five seconds behind in the conversation, and her mouth was still lagging behind _that_. "I know a little about dating! Maeri and Orisa were dating, I think. I think, um... I think to date right, you mostly have to comb each other's hair and make presents for each other."

Nitori frowned at this. "Why would you want to date someone who can't even comb their own hair? Anyway, I need to get moving, or I'm going to be late. Until I get back, Hatate's in charge."

* * *

 _Hop. Hop. Hop._

In some ways, being a frog was simpler than being a person. You could take a nap whenever you wanted, and nobody would complain about you being lazy. You could eat whenever you wanted, and nobody would complain about you ruining your diet. When it got too hot, you just stayed in the water, and when it got too cold, you hibernated and waited it out. As far as Suwako was concerned, frogs had life pretty well figured out. Everybody else overcomplicated things.

"Suwako! Suwako, I know you're out here."

Like Kanako. Kanako always had some plan in motion, and wanted to be bustling from place to place while she carried it out. She hadn't yet figured out the secret of the frog: The best plan was one that let you relax and wait until whatever you were looking for just happened to drift by. In a frog's case, that mostly meant flies, but Suwako was perfectly willing to lower her standards if it meant she got to relax.

She waddled her way past a few clumps of grass and under a broad-leafed plant, then huddled up in the shade under its stalk. Above, she could hear Kanako stomping back and forth, brushing through the foliage with her hand. "Suwako, if you don't come out, it's mealworms for dinner again."

She wasn't going to be lured out that easily. Suwako crept back, putting a few more centimeters between herself and the searching hand.

It was apparently the wrong move. Kanako gave a triumphant, "Aha!" and before Suwako could react, a hand shot down and scooped her up. Kanako raised her up until Suwako was looking her face to face, with each of Kanako's eyes nearly the size of Suwako's entire head. "There you are. You know that the plans I'm working on are for _your_ benefit, so I'm not sure why you're so intent on not helping out."

 _"Ribbit."_

"Yes, it's a lot of work. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it."

 _"Ribbit."_

" _No,_ I'm not going to do it all myself. Now, come on. If we start soon, we'll be done by dinner time, and you can goof off all evening." Kanako relaxed her grip as she turned back toward the shrine, and Suwako took her chance. She lunged forward, hopping out of Kanako's grip. For just a moment, she was flying through the air in blessed freedom... and then Kanako's hands closed around her. She wriggled free again, and soon, was bouncing in the air, flitting from freedom to captivity moment by moment as Kanako struggled to keep her contained. "D-dear, you are _really_ starting to piss me off...!"

"A-ah, uh. Hey." Nitori's voice came from somewhere outside Suwako's view, and it distracted her for just enough for Kanako to get a good grip on her. She didn't seem prepared to relinquish it any time soon, either. "I'm not... disturbing something, am I?"

"Oh, no," Kanako said. "Suwako here is just being a brat. _Dear_ —" Kanako gave a threatening squeeze, just enough to make Suwako squirm again, "—Nitori is here for her date with Sanae. You should really say hi."

 _"Ribbit."_

"In human form."

Suwako squirmed again, but there was no escaping this. The writing was on the wall. After another few seconds of resistance, she caved in and pulled on her faith, manifesting her normal human body. To soften the blow of defeat a little, though, she immediately leaned back against Kanako, looking as casual as she could, as if the whole thing had been her idea all along. "I don't even know what there is to say," she said, with an expansive sigh toward the sky. "It's no fun teasing you about courting Sanae if you're actually doing it."

"I-it's not courtship!" Nitori sputtered. "We're just going on a date...!"

"What do you think courtship _is_?"

Kanako ignored Suwako's attempts to tease Nitori. "I'd normally be against Sanae dating a youkai, but she says you helped save her life. I suppose that counts for something."

"Yeah, gee, thanks."

"She's still getting ready, but I'll tell her you've arrived." Seeing Suwako start trying to sneak off, Kanako rested a hand on her shoulder, giving it a warning squeeze. " _We_ were just heading inside, weren't we dear?"

"Funny you mention that, since I actually just remembered I need to run down to the village for—w-whoa!" Kanako tugged Suwako toward the shrine, and her protests were cut off. She pouted the entire way, but Kanako didn't show a moment of sympathy. Truly, she had the heart of a snake.

"Sanae!" Kanako called, once they were inside. "Nitori is waiting for you outside."

"Ah! Alright!" Sanae's voice came from the direction of her room. "I'll be right out!"

"And as for you..." Kanako's gaze turned toward Suwako, and she gave her a gentle push toward the living room table. "We aren't getting up until we have a plan to get fifty new worshipers for the shrine by the end of the month. If you aren't back at full power soon, some of the other gods will take advantage of it to move in on our territory."

"Fiiiiiiine. But I get to watch TV." Suwako leaned across the table to turn it on. It hummed to life, displaying Rinnosuke, holding up a blender and very seriously reviewing its components.

Kanako eyed the TV. "You're just looking for an excuse to not pay attention, aren't you?"

"What? No!" Suwako gasped, sounding mortally offended. "Haven't you watched this show before? It's great! Last week he thought an egg beater was some kind of weapon!"

"And this is entertaining, is it?"

"Ah, it's the best, trust me on this."

"Good evening, and welcome to Collectibles Corner. On this program, I examine the many devices from the outside world, and explain their purposes. It's both informative and educational." Without any further introduction, Rinnosuke reached under the desk and produced the controller for an RC car. He laid it out in front of the camera with silent solemnity. Suwako shot Kanako a look of anticipation. "For today's first exhibit, I'll be talking about this device, which is called a 'radio-control car controller.' This device is used to control vehicles in the outside world. I believe that the benefits are that it allows one to drive from positions other than the normal driver's seat. Now, if you look here, you'll see that there are two levers..."

* * *

"What do you _mean_ technical difficulties?!" Nitori snapped.

The kappa in front of them glanced back at the doorway she was guarding, then leaned in conspiratorially. "If you want to get _technical,_ the _difficulty_ is that the movie isn't starting yet because the show before it is running over. There's this gray-haired guy and he just won't shut up."

"... Rinnosuke." Nitori groaned.

"Oh! That's right, his show is tonight, isn't it? And we left Hina and Hatate there all alone with him..."

"Jeez. That was a mistake. I guess we just have to hope Hatate will shut him up. Hina's too nice. If it was just her, he'd probably keep going until he passed out."

Nitori sighed, but there was nothing she could do about it. They said their thanks to the guard and stepped back to join the rest of the crowd mingling around the perimeter.

In the center of the clearing was a hastily-erected amphitheater, with a fence around it and a stenciled sign above the single entrance that read 'GENSOKYO THEATER.' At the lowest point of the bowl-shaped structure, there was a collapsible cloth screen, with a projector somewhere. Showing normal kappa ingenuity, a group of them had erected the entire structure nearly overnight a few days ago, including the excavation for the foundation.

… and Nitori hadn't heard a word about it until it had been completed and Hatate had gone to cover it for the news.

She crossed her arms, scowling down at the structure. "It still really bugs me. We did all the work of setting up the TV station, and these jerks come in and start showing _our_ programs to people! … if we weren't on a date, I'd be tracking down whoever's in charge and giving them a piece of my mind."

"But we _are_ on a date," Sanae gently reminded her. She leaned over and hugged Nitori from behind. "So you should relax and try to enjoy yourself!"

"A-a-ah, uh, um. Yeah. R-right." Being hugged by Sanae from that angle was a very interesting sensation. Squishy. Nitori reached up to tug her hat down to hide her blushing face, only to remember that she hadn't worn it. Damn date clothes. "... so this kind of thing is really what outside world humans do on date?"

"Mmhm!" Sanae released the hug and straightened up. "They call it 'dinner and a movie'! Dinner will come after, though."

"It seems a lot easier to just watch the movies at home."

"Going out makes it special, though! And you get to dress up!"

Sanae stepped away and spun to show off her outfit again. She'd dressed in a t-shirt and skirt, with her hair back in a ponytail. Nitori only knew it was what passed for 'casual' among humans because Sanae had described it to her. Her own idea of a casual outfit had a loop for holding your wrench and a waterproof pocket for storing blueprints. She still couldn't deny that Sanae looked very nice, in the hard-to-describe way that she'd started noticing ever since humans' weird ideas about romance had wormed their way into her head.

"Yeah, I guess there's that."

"And! You get to have popcorn!"

"... popcorn?"

"It's like corn that bursts open and pushes its guts out!"

"So, er, it's a weapon?"

"Huh? No, you eat it. Trust me, it's good! … I guess they don't have it in Gensokyo, though."

The kappa by the gate stepped forward and tugged the latch aside, waving a hand in the air for attention. "Alright, folks!" She pulled the gate open, with a squeak of metal. "The show is about to start! Please take your seats!"

"Oh!" Sanae grabbed Nitori's hand and smiled back to her, pulling her forward. "Follow me! I'm an expert at picking movie seats."

Sanae hurried toward the gate, leaving Nitori scrambling to catch up. She was nearly one of the first to step through it, after handing her ticket off to the guard, and chose a seat about a third of the way from the bottom. Soon, the projector at the back of the clearing came to life, and the station's current broadcast flickered into view on the screen, four meters tall. The last few seconds of Rinnosuke's show rolled to the end of one of his long-winded explanations, and a swelling orchestra announced the parade of logos at the start of a movie.

Nitori craned her neck to look back at the speakers. "This actually isn't a bad setup they have here," she whispered. "I'm kind of jealous we didn't think of it first. I bet there's basically no overhead once you're up and running..."

Sanae smirked over. "You're even thinking about that kind of stuff right now, huh? You've become a real businesswoman!"

"Ehe. I've learned from the best."

"While I was recovering from that fight, I had to watch a lot of TV, so I actually had a lot of ideas for improving the station! It's going to be really busy once I'm back full time. _But_ , this is still a date. So, here!" Sanae's hand slid over and rested on Nitori's interlacing their fingers and giving it a squeeze. She flushed slightly, but smiled. "I'll teach you about this stuff, too."

Nitori gave a shaky nod and turned her eyes back to the screen, where they stayed glued until the credits were long over.


End file.
